


Out Of This World

by drakensis



Category: Original Work
Genre: Boarding School, High School, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:41:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 106,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26779792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drakensis/pseuds/drakensis
Summary: Alexander McKenzie wasn't expecting to gain a superpower when he was waiting for a bus home from school. Now he's been thrown out of his nice safe world into another one where the rules are unfamiliar, where authority figures may be helpful or treacherous with little clue as to which is which, where even those trapped with him may turn on him viciously. It's called 'high school'.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	1. One Step Away From Home

The air was clear, crisp and with just a hint of winter cold that felt terribly out of place to Alex McKenzie

Then again, the clarity might be due to adrenaline and the cold of sweat down his spine.

Tree branches interlaced above him shook, and Alex swallowed nervously, eyeing the pig… the boar, his inner pedant corrected him unhelpfully, that was huffing at him.

For his age, Alex was tall but not particularly heavily built. The boar bristling at him was big, muscular. He’d never seen a boar in real life, didn’t think he’d ever seen a pig unless you counted bacon. But he’d read Asterix comics and now he recalled that while the boars there were amusingly small compared to the large and rotund Obelix, they were as tall at the shoulder as the smaller Asterix and likely out-massed the little Gaul.

He felt more like the latter than the former, faced by this.

Uneasily he shifted his grip slightly on the branch he’d picked up, now his only defense.

How did this happen!?

* * *

It had started out as a perfectly normal day.

He’d woken in his bed with a vague recollection of a dream about a castle, a shoreline, a dense forest, all of which he’d ascribed to the half-read fantasy novel on his bedside table. An early summer day beckoned, as did the smell of breakfast wafting up the stairs from the kitchen.

As was normal, Alex’s father was first up and provided bacon and eggs as a second course to breakfast, fitted neatly between breakfast cereal and toast with marmalade. They’d spoken quietly, listened to the morning news and then parted ways to prepare for the day ahead as the family slugabeds were roused by alarm clocks for their own morning routines.

With no competition for the main bathroom while the others breakfasted, Alex used the shower. The dream hadn’t quite left him and he frowned as he lathered his blond hair with shampoo. What scene might have sparked the thought? There were forests in the book but castles were not isolated things by shorelines, they were large communities, bustling and with associated towns. Which was more realistic in most cases, he guessed, at least historically.

And a shoreline? Am I thinking of Cair Paravel, he wondered? A deserted ruined castle by the sea… it would fit, but he wasn’t reading one of the Narnia books.

Alex rinsed, dried himself off and went back to his bedroom to dress. He picked up the book by his bed to put into his coat for the trip to school, then hesitated and set it aside. Rummaging around on the shelves turned up his copy of Prince Caspian and he tucked the slim volume into the pocket of his uniform blazer, using a spare trading card (from a promotional booster pack of a game he’d never played) as a bookmark.

His brother Angus poked his head around the door to ask a vital question about the show they’d watched the previous night and Alex herded the younger boy off to his own bedroom to get dressed for school, doing his best to come up with a plausible answer he could offer with confidence that would satisfy the ten-year-old.

The bus collected all three of them, but Anna went upstairs with her own friends and Angus, curiosity about the show sated for the moment, was playing something on his phone; so Alex had a chance to pull out Prince Caspian and leaf through to where the Pevensies returned to Narnia as the bus took students and morning commuters down the valley.

The itch at the back of his mind had remained determinedly unscratched though.

He also finished the book in snatches through the day, leaving himself with nothing to read on the way home. He’d have done better to drop by the library at lunch… or when buying his phone, not been stubborn about phones being for telephone calls and taking something that let him use the internet. On the other hand, the latter would have cost more for the phone and per month so on balance, he thought he’d been right there… and what was it about that bloody forest?

“What’s that you’re drawing?” Mr. Graham asked, looking over Alex’s shoulder in art class. “Trees?”

Alex stared at the lines on the paper, his effort to recreate the image of the castle gate he remembered. “Um.”

The teacher shook his head slightly. “You’re supposed to be drawing the rest of the class, Alexander. Start over.”

There was a sniggering from further down the table as Alex, red-faced, flipped the page and applied his pencil to a fresh sheet of paper.

“Was it lewd?” an anonymous voice asked.

Alex made a point of drawing a snout on the face of the boy he thought had made that comment, something that Mr. Graham made no comment on when he looked over his shoulder again. Then again, the other boy was also starting over and in that case, the art teacher had removed the page from the art book physically and torn it up with a dry: “I don’t think any of your fellow students are dressed as superheroes, Joe. Start over.”

The page had been disposed of and Alex guessed that it probably had been the girls in class being drawn in something… inappropriate.

Then again, Mr. Graham may have not noticed the pig-snout on grounds of the quality of the art, the boy admitted to himself. He’d never claimed to be another… Leonardo da Vinci? His mind blanked on any more current artists. No, wait! Bob Ross. He wasn’t a budding Bob Ross. That was a little less geeky a reference if anyone asked.

Alex got through school without any further embarrassment and made the familiar walk down the hill. The grammar school he and Anna attended was a Victorian-era block of stone built overlooking what had once been a distinct village and was now part of a more or less continuous sprawl linking towns and villages up the valley. His brother attended a primary school at the bottom of the hill so they could all get the same bus to and from home.

He jumped as Anna grabbed his arm. “Alex!”

“What?”

“I called you twice,” she huffed. “I’ll be taking a later bus.” With one hand she waved in the general direction of some of the girls she hung out with. “You and Angus can get home alright?”

“We do most days,” Alex assured her.

Anna shook her head. “Well don’t space out.” She turned on her heel and ran back to her friends.

That wasn’t… entirely unfair, today at least.

Alex rubbed his face and continued down the hill to see that Angus was at the bus stop… the bus stop on the other side of the road, that was. Judging from the other kids he was just chatting to his friends while they waited for their own bus going in the other direction so Alex called his name, waved his hand when his brother looked up, and after checking both ways crossed the road.

“Going to ‘Stall?” he asked drily.

The other kids snickered and Angus shook his head. “Waiting for you and for the bus.”

“Whichever came first?”

He got a shrug in reply and grinned. “Okay.” This bus came first, usually. No harm in waiting with Angus’ friends until it got here, unless it was off-schedule. Again.

Paying only passing attention to Angus’ chatter, Alex split his attention between looking for buses in both directions. Inevitably his mind went back to the forest he’d dreamed about. Such a boring dream really, no talking lions or anything interesting.

Then again, a talking lion would be scary, he admitted to himself. He didn’t think he was a budding High King of Narnia, or even an Edmund.

Distracted, he heard the roar of a heavy motor vehicle from down the valley and blinked. “Angus, I think that’s our bus coming now.”

“Aw!”

“Come on.” Alex grabbed Angus’ hand and checking for imminent traffic, dashed onto the road, expecting the bus to come around the corner any moment.

What came around the corner wasn’t the bus.

Low, sleek and far far faster than a motor vehicle had rights to be on this winding road, it was the source of the engine noise and it rushed up the road without respect for other drivers, much less pedestrians. Alex got a brief impression of two huge rear wheels driving it forwards, of a startled and annoyed face behind the windshield.

It was heading right for them, far too fast.

Tightening his grip on his little brother, Alex turned their brisk trot across the road into a dive, heaving the smaller boy forwards and hopefully out of the road-juggernaut’s path.

Between one blink and the next the two of them hit the ground…

…but it wasn’t the tarmac that Alex expected. It wasn’t the curb either.

The fourteen-year-old stared at the dirt he was rolling in, and then, not letting go of his brother, looked around.

Trees, rising up around them. No sign of the vehicle that had been hurtling towards them. Not the bus-stops.

Just… forest. Branches forming a thick canopy above them. The smell of the sea – or at least the sea coast. Somewhere up above them, the sound of a gull’s cry.

“Alex?” Angus sounded nervous, which seemed fair. “Where are we?”

Alex released his brother’s hand and scrambled to his feet. “I… Narnia?”

“Really?”

“I…” He considered. Did he want to scare the younger boy? “I don’t know. But…” he broke off and half laughed. It didn’t sound amused, even to himself. “It’s as good an explanation as we have.”

“I thought that car was going to hit us.”

“So did I.”

Did it hit us? Alex looked down at himself. School uniform, now just a little dirtied up. He brushed at it self-consciously. He couldn’t help but think of some of the anime he’d been watching. It was practically a cliché set up for a story these days, wasn’t it? Hit by a truck and sent to another world. But that was just fiction, right.

Angus touched one of the trees. “We’re really here. This is a tree, not a prop.”

“I guess we are.” Alex frowned at the thought. That thing that had… almost hit them. There had been no pain, so they couldn’t have actually been hit. He hoped.

It couldn’t have been… some supervillain’s vehicle? But what would a supervillain be doing driving at top speed through the sleepy little village where their schools were? Had there been police giving chase?

Somewhere deep inside him, Alex felt a creeping suspicion of guilt. If he hadn’t mistaken it for the sound of a bus…

Had he got his little brother ki…

Nope! He shook his head sharply. “Okay, uh. Well, we’d better call home.”

“Mum’s gonna freak!” Angus declared.

“Yyyyyeah, I think you’re right.” There was a distinctly queasy feeling his stomach as he found his phone and got the speed-dial for home.

Except nothing happened. After a moment the phone beeped loudly and a recorded voice told him there was no connection. Startled, Alex checked and sure enough, there were no bars. “Oh, for Christ’s sake…” He paused. “Don’t tell Mum I said that.”

Angus grinned. “Ask me no promises and I’ll tell you no lies.”

He rolled his eyes. “I should never have taught you that. Seriously. Is your phone working?”

His brother checked his phone. “I have power, but no signal,” he reported. “Where are we?”

“Somewhere with no reception, I guess. Lousy luck.” Alex looked around. “Let’s head downhill, if we find a stream or something, we can probably follow it to civilisation.”

Angus followed him as he started picking his way down the slope. The younger boy’s sneakers were better suited to the uneven floor than the polished dress shoes required for Alex’s school uniform. I’m not exactly prepared for this.

“If this is really Narnia, do you think we’ll meet the White Witch?” Angus asked.

“I really hope not.”

His brother thought and then nodded. “But the beavers… or Santa Claus? That would be cool.”

Alex looked around. It didn’t feel like early summer. In fact, the leaves on the trees looked more like autumn, with the beginnings of rich colours. No snow on the ground though, and not so many fallen leaves. “I don’t think it’s winter, wherever we are.”

Could we be in the southern hemisphere, he wondered? That would explain the season wouldn’t it? Very late autumn? What would there be to tell?

The sound of water suggested that they were going in the right direction and Alex almost tripped in his distraction, one foot catching on a fallen branch. He paused and picked it up. You never knew when something needed to be poked. The bark was rough against his hands as he stripped off extraneous twigs and snapped off the thinner end, leaving himself a more or less straight section perhaps five feet long and a centimetre or two thick at best.

“I think it’s a river!” Angus called and started trotting faster.

“Wait for me.” Alex realised he’d fallen behind and jogged to keep up. He still had longer legs, even if his brother’s near constant growth spurts were closing their heights awfully fast.

The younger McKenzie didn’t exactly wait but he did slow down a bit and Alex caught up with him, seeing glittering water ahead through the trees. They emerged from beneath the canopy, blinking a little in the sunlight, and sure enough there was an expanse of water before them, another wooded shore on the far side.

Angus brightened. “A river! It’s a big one!” The other shore had to be well over a hundred metres away.

Alex studied the water and then shook his head slowly. “I don’t think it’s a river, Angus. There’s no current.” He scanned the opposite shore and found breaks in it. “Those are islands… look at the gaps – I can’t even see another shore through that gap, this must be a big one.” Or maybe the sea, he thought. The shoreline was rocky at the moment; but looking down he thought he saw a beach of sorts. More mud than sand. If it was high tide…

“So, can we find our way home now?”

“Good question.” The sun was high in the sky and ahead of them. Although if the time of day was different that was no use for saying what time of day it meant. And if they were in the southern hemisphere…

“Right. For the sake of argument, call that south.” He pointed out over the water. So…” He thought and then pointed to their right. “That’s west. Let’s go that way.”

“Why west?” Angus asked, although he obediently joined Alex in walking that way. They didn’t stay right by the shore, but Alex didn’t want to stray too far from either.

“We’re west of the main watershed in England. It may not matter if we’re not in England, but if we’re in the Lake District or something, we should wind up near the outlets for the lake.” He hoped.

How far had they even walked? He had no real idea. Checking his watch, it had been… fifteen minutes since they got here? Ten? He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d heard what he’d thought was the bus.

They’d walked at least that far again when Angus brightened. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

His brother pointed in-land. “I heard someone.”

Alex stopped walking and turned to look away from the water. “I don’t hear anything.” Or at least, nothing but the tree branches in the light wind.

“There it is again!” Angus scrambled towards the trees. “Hello! Hello! Can you hear me!?”

“Angus, calm down.” Alex didn’t run after him, but he did lengthen his stride. “Don’t run and shout, you’ll trip over something.”

His brother paid no attention. “Help, we’re lost!”

“Oh, dammit…” He’d really need to talk to Angus – again – about what to say to strangers. Even if he had heard someone, there was no telling who it was.

And then, predictably, his brother stepped wrong on a stone, stumbled and caught himself on hands and knees. It wasn’t that he was particularly clumsy, but with the way he was growing he seemed to never quite know how long his arms and legs were.

“Are you…” Alex caught up and was about to help the boy up when he heard the noise too. A low whuffing sound. Someone breathing… something breathing.

And then it trotted out through the brush between some of the trees. Tusks, dark and bristling fur. Pig-like… in the same way that the vehicle they’d seen earlier was like a bus, which wasn’t very much.

Alex paused and met two small, beady eyes that had very definitely seen him. “Craaaaap,” he said in a low voice. He moved the stick he was holding forwards, hoping not to provoke anything. It seemed rather thin comfort at the moment. “Angus, don’t move.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a rather large animal looking at us,” he said, trying to keep his voice low.

“Cool.”

“No, not cool. Now, slowly, crawl behind me.”

“But you said not to move.”

“Not the…!” He paused, took a deep breath. The boar was scuffing its hooves against the forest floor, eyes still on them. “Angus, this is serious. Crawl behind me, slowly. And look around, do you see any trees you can climb.”

God help them if Angus guessed wrong. At least they were both decently tall for their age.

“It’s just a big pig,” his brother said as he scrambled around Alex. “Is it really dangerous?”

“The key word is big, not pig.” Alex heard his voice shake and took another gulp of air. “Do you see a tree you can get up?”

“Yes.”

At least he sounded sure. “How high do you think you can climb up it?”

Angus paused. “Pretty high? Up above your head.”

“Good. Where is it?” Was the boar calming down or was that wishful thinking?

“Off on your… right.”

“Okay, slowly stand up and move over to the tree. If I shout, I want you to get up that tree as fast as you can.”

“What about you?” asked Angus, sounding nervous.

“I’ll be trying to climb it too. So you’d better get up there fast.” Alex forced a chuckle. It didn’t sound very convincing to him. “Think of it as a race.”

“What do I get if I beat you?”

Not gored. “I’ll get you a can of cola when we get home.”

“Okay. Mum doesn’t like it when you give me fizzy drinks.”

Alex heard his brother moving to the right and saw the boar’s eyes moving to follow. “Then don’t tell her.” He swung the stick to get its attention back to him. “Here piggy-piggy. Soweee. Sowee…” He couldn’t remember offhand where he’d heard that used to guide a pig’s attention and he might be getting it wrong but whether it was or not, it successfully got the boar looking at him again.

Of course, the downside of that was that he had the boar’s attention again. And if it had been calming then he didn’t think it was now, judging by the snorting. It wasn’t exactly close but it wasn’t all that far away. Far enough to build up good speed if it came at them.

“I’m at the tree.”

“Then climb!”

Perhaps triggered by the shrillness of his voice, the boar squealed angrily and broke into a rush at Alex. Those short legs could pick up a lot of speed. He darted left, not right, drawing it to turn away from Angus, then flung himself back to the right as the tusks came close.

He landed on his back, the boar rushing past him but already slowing to turn and come after him. Rolling over, Alex got his feet after him and ran like he’d never run before.

Fortunately, the tree was only a few yards away and Angus was already two branches up. Alex flung the stick away and jumped up for the first branch, which was only about at his shoulder, swinging himself up onto it.

A moment later the boar was under him, a tug on his trouser cuff almost throwing him off-balance. Dragging on the branch, Alex heard the trousers tear and was up. He grabbed the next branch and was up on it as soon as Angus was off it. It creaked alarmingly and he reached out and got hold of another branch on the other side of the tree.

Gulping for breath he pulled himself up until he and Angus were both a good six feet off the ground. His ankle stung but all he wanted to do was cling to the tree, pressing his face against the bark. From below the boar squealed again and there was a thump as it threw itself against the tree trunk.

Fortunately, the tree was sturdy enough to take that impact, as could be expected from something strong enough to support two boys in its branches. It rather suggested that the boar might not be inclined to give up though.

“Alex?”

He freed one hand and reached around to grasp his brother’s wrist. “Good choice of tree, Angus.”

“Are you okay?”

He paused. “I think so.” The buzz of adrenaline made it hard to tell.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Oh.” Looking down, the teenager realised his brother was right. The cuff of his right trouser leg was ripped and blood was trickling down his shin. “Just a scrape. I’ve done worse falling down on pavement.” It was more a stinging than a pain, he thought. And then, as if summoned by the thought, the pain announced itself. “Owwwkay,” he squeaked. “Maybe not worse.” He gulped it back. It wasn’t the worst he’d been hurt ever. But last time he’d been about Angus’ age and had cried. This really wasn’t the time for that.

Angus didn’t seem to be buying the tough act. “What do we do now?”

“Now…” He paused and rested his face against the tree. “Now we wait for the boar to give up.”

“How long will that be?”

“I don’t know, okay?” And then on top of his leg hurting, his stomach started to rumble.

Angus gulped. “It’s dinner time, isn’t it?”

“Must be getting pretty near.”

“Didn’t you have lunch?”

Alex sighed. “Yeah.” He felt his brother shift his arm and tightened his hold reflexively. “What are you doing?”

“I just wanna hold onto you.”

“Okay.” He relaxed his hold and Angus turned his arm so that each of them was holding onto the other’s wrist.

Angus gave a giggle that was half sob. “It’s a warrior’s grip.”

“Yeah.” Was it getting dark? It wasn’t even five in the afternoon yet. Then again, it might be a different time of day here. Getting around the forest…

Alex gripped the tree with his free hand and rubbed his face against the bark, scraping himself to stay clearheaded. What was going on with him?

What had he been thinking?

Oh yes, getting around the forest would be harder in the dark. “We might have to wait until the sun sets.”

Angus made an accepting noise. “That might be a while. I think the sun’s getting higher in the sky.”

“How can you tell?”

“It’s getting brighter,” his brother said matter-of-factly. “And warmer.”

What? Warmer, maybe. He hadn’t exactly been paying attention. But brighter? Everything seemed to be getting dimmer, not brighter.

Maybe it was Alex looking in the wrong direction? He craned his neck around to look in the same direction as his brother.

One foot slipped off the branch he’d been standing on.

Oh…

“Alex!”

…shit…

He could still feel his brother’s hand on his wrist as he fell backwards into blackness.

* * *

Waking up, the first thing that Alex realised was that he wasn’t in his own bed. He was under blankets, not the duvet he was used to.

On the other hand, he was decently warm and it seemed reasonably unlikely that a boar would hunt him when he was in a bed. Someone would probably force him to wake up and explain how he and Angus had gotten from a tree in a forest to a bed somewhere…

Wait…

Where was Angus?

Alex’s eyes snapped open and he pushed back the blankets to sit up.

The room wasn’t huge, but it was at least decently modern with an institutionally bland walls and floor. There was a second bed to his left, unoccupied, and an armchair in the far corner that was. “Dad?”

His father didn’t stir, not really surprising at the dry, croaking whispered that came from Alex’s lips. He swallowed to moisten his mouth, looking around before trying again. He could feel something wrapped around his ankle under the blankets, probably bandages. And there was something binding his right arm.

Alex examined the arm and gulped a second time. His arm had a needle in it, secured by some tape, connected to a bag up on a stand. Some sort of intravenous… but that wasn’t important.

What was important was that this wasn’t his arm.

He knew his arm. He’d grown up with it.

It was pale and freckled, if he looked at the back of his hand he could see blue veins beneath the skin. Above the wrists, there was a thin layer of hair so pale and fine that it was barely visible.

That was what his right arm should look like.

The skin on this arm was a deep brown, the colour of dark chocolate, and Alex saw no hair upon in.

This was not his right arm.

Alex moved his fingers, and the fingers of this hand moved.

He shifted his shoulder and the arm responded, a slight twinge from where the needle was in it.

He tried to take hold of it with his left hand, but that was the same colour. What was going on? Was he in someone else’s body? How would that happen? Had someone cut off his arms and replaced them? But why?

They had to know who he was! They had to, why else was his dad here?

“Dad!”

His father jerked awake in the chair. “What?” He paused, blinked at the bed and then nodded. “Alex.”

Oh thank god, he recognises me. “Dad, where’s Angus? Is he alright? What’s happened to me?”

“Alex, calm down.” His father took his glasses out of his pocket and put them on. “Your brother is fine. A little shaken but he’s not hurt or anything. He’s at home.”

Alex exhaled. “Oh. Okay. But…” He held up his arms. “What’s happening to me?”

Crossing to the bed, his father took his hand. “You’re going to be alright. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I was… I was in a tree with Angus. We’d… there was some sort of crazy car that came at us while we were crossing the road. And then we were in a forest somewhere…”

“Angus said you called it Narnia.”

“I have no idea.” He shrugged. “Then there was a boar, so we climbed a tree, but I think I fell…”

He got a nod. “Yes, that would match what Angus could tell us. Somehow when you fell out of that tree you ended up in the garden at home. Your mother called emergency, which was a good thing because you were going into a coma.”

“A coma?”

Dad nodded. “You’ve done biology at school, they must have taught you about mutants.”

“Well, yeah, but…” Alex blinked. “Wait, I erupted?”

“Is that what they call it now? It was manifested, when I was in school.” His father turned his hand over. “The doctors did a blood test and you have the mutagene. We think – the doctors and I – that when you and Angus were almost hit by Black Paladin’s Carriage -”

“By what?” That thing didn’t look anything like a carriage. It was black, in places, maybe…

“I didn’t name it.” His father gave him an amused smile. “And I suppose not many people argue with Black Paladin.”

Alex leant back against the pillows. “Black Paladin? I think I’ve heard of him…”

“It may not be the same one. The police say there have been a dozen or so people using that name over the last sixty or so years. Sometimes more than one at a time. I suppose that even criminals can have legacies,” his father added with an expression that suggested he found the idea distasteful. “But anyway, the theory is that you manifested as a mutant and somehow teleported yourself and Angus away.”

“And when I fell out of the tree, I teleported us home again?”

Alex received a nod of agreement.

“I think I’d have been better teleporting right home.”

“Yes, I’d agree.” His father squeezed his hand. “But you got there in the end, along with Angus. So you managed the important parts.”

“But if I teleport then why are my arms like this?”

There was a knock on the door and a woman put her head around the door. “Mr McKenzie, is everything… ah, young Mr McKenzie, good morning.”

“Uh, good morning.”

“Are you in any pain?” she asked, entering the room. “Any odd sensations?”

“Uh… no. Just… confused about my arms. And… is the rest of my skin like this?”

She nodded, unflappably. “Yes, it’s a full transformation. Most mutants go through something like this. Now, I imagine you’re hungry.”

Now that she mentioned it… Alex nodded.

“That’s also normal. The IV gets you the necessary nutrients but your stomach’s probably empty. We’ll get you something filling and once you’re off the I.V., you’ll be back on normal foods.” She checked the bag before looking back at Alex. “I’m the nurse for this ward, Joanne Bentley. There’s a call button here by your bed – if you need anything, push this and someone will get to you as soon as we can.” She showed Alex the button, which was on a tab like a car alarm. “If you really need help right away, then press this smaller button here, and then press the main button. But that’s for real emergencies, Mr McKenzie. If you start bleeding anywhere, or are in pain, or anything like that it’s fine. But please don’t press that just because you want to use the toilet or to speak to someone.”

“I’ll make sure he behaves,” Alex’s father told her mildly.

“It’s best if we’re all on the same page,” she said, unimpressed by the assurance.

“I understand. Main button for help, little button and then the main button for help now,” Alex confirmed.

“Good. Have you been in hospital before?”

“Not for years.” He thought. “I don’t remember much. Seven years?”

“That’s right,” his father agreed. “A small operation with his testicles.”

“Dad!”

Nurse Bentley (was she called that, or should he call her Miss Bentley?) laughed. “It’s alright, Mr McKenzie. I’m a nurse, I deal with much worse than that.” She gave his father a glance that seemed to convey some kind of message, before continuing: “Well, we’ll try to make you comfortable while you’re here, but not too comfortable. It’s always embarrassing when patients decide they’d rather stay here than go home.”

“I… think I’d rather go home. When I can.”

“That was a joke,” she explained kindly and left the room before Alex could dig himself any deeper.

“You’re not very good at noticing those,” his father told him with an amused look on his face.

“I have a sense of humour!”

“When it comes to written jokes, yes. Not so much with tone of voice. You can’t learn that from reading, Alex.”

Alex sighed. Not this again. “Weren’t you going to tell me what’s happened to my skin?”

“Mutation is often accompanied by physical transformation, Alex. It seems you’re one of those who get that.”

“Well, okay, but I thought that would be turning into a monster or something?” Alex examined his hands again. “I’m just… well, I guess my skin’s black now? Ethnically, not literally.”

His father nodded. “Yes. Your face has changed a bit as well.”

“Eh, I don’t look at my face much anyway.”

“That’s probably a sensible way to look at it,” his father told him with some relief. “We’ll get you a mirror at some point. The important thing is that it doesn’t change who you are inside. Your mother and I still love you no matter what you look like.”

Alex nodded. He’d honestly never doubted that.

“But please try not to run off to wherever this Narnia is again. It worries us.”

“I promise I’ll try,” he said honestly. “But I don’t really know how it happens so it’s hard for me to be sure.”

* * *

Getting out of hospital wasn’t too bad. His new face was high cheek-boned and for some reason his hair was still blond, even growing in longer and thicker than it used to be. The real surprise was that his clothes didn’t quite fit any more – Alex had needed a new notch on his belt for a narrower waist and his shoes were far too large. He had spare trousers to replace the torn ones so, the rest could probably wait, clothes being a bit baggy wasn’t the end of the world and the school rules didn’t prohibit long hair for boys, but shoes were important. Thus, before he could return to school, a trip for new shoes was required.

“If this is the worst that happens over this, I’ve gotten off pretty lightly,” Alex told his mother as they walked to the shoe shop. Since the plan was to go on to school afterwards, he was wearing his uniform, except for the blazer which would need a full dry cleaning and wasn’t back yet. A V-neck sweater in the same colour made a reasonable substitute and it would only be for a day or two.

“You might find that it affects your life more than you expect,” she told him. “People react more to appearances than most want to admit.”

“I could have wound up with four arms. Or unable to breath outside water.” He’d done some research on the internet. Videos of mutants who emerged from a trigger coma with drastic changes were fairly easy to find, even if they were distasteful to watch.

His mother shook her head slightly. “You’re lucky in that respect, but even if the changes are more subtle, you’ll still need to live with them.”

“I think I can manage.”

“We’ll see.”

They reached the shop and Alex opened the door and held it for his mother.

“How can I help you?” the assistant asked. The shop was empty at this time of day and Alex guessed she was more than a little bored.

“We’ll need my son’s feet measured for shoes.”

The woman glanced at Alex, then at his mother and hesitated. “Of course,” she said after a moment. “Please come here and we’ll do the measurements.”

Alex took a seat on one of the stools and unlaced his shoes, rubbing them. Even padded with newspaper, the fit wasn’t all that comfortable. They’d survived the little trip to ‘Narnia’ so hopefully he’d grow back into the shoes.

“Here we go.” The assistant put the measurement board in front of Alex and he put his foot on it, letting the woman adjust the sliders. She arched an eyebrow at the results. “I see. Well, we should have plenty of shoes that fit you. What are you looking for?”

“School shoes. And I suppose something for home.”

“Trainers and slippers,” his mother said firmly. “You’ll need both, Alex.”

“Okay, fine. Shoes, trainers and slippers, I guess.”

The assistant returned with half-a-dozen boxes of shoes to try, which seemed a little bit much to get started but Alex guessed she was bored and wanted to get the most out of the visit. He opened the first box and put the lid back on right away. “I don’t think I want any heels,” he said as diplomatically as he could. He wasn’t exactly short and it hadn’t occurred to him that men’s shoes might sometimes come with high heels, even if these were pretty subtle.

“They’re not all that high,” the assistant began. His mother cleared her throat and gave her a look. “But as you wish. You probably won’t want these then?” She showed her another box.

That box had shoes with even more pronounced heels. “Uh, no thank you.” Alex picked up another box. Trainers, that shouldn’t be too bad. “I’ll try these on and make sure they fit.”

“Sure.” The assistant’s smile was a bit strained and Alex’s mum went with her to the back, speaking quietly.

The trainers fit fine, which was good. They were also white with pink piping, which wasn’t ideal, but there were probably other colours. By the time his mother came back, he’d tried on the other pair of trainers, which were plain white but didn’t feel as comfortable. The last two boxes were very fuzzy slippers and Alex put them aside without trying them on. This might be harder than he’d expected.

“Any luck, dear?”

“These fit,” he showed her the pink-piped trainers. “But I’d rather not have these colours. These don’t fit, unfortunately.”

“Alright. Just wait here.” It only took a minute or so for her to return with the assistant and several more boxes. The first box contained trainers just like the first ones, but with green piping. Double-checking the fit solved the trainer part of the shopping expedition.

His mother, master shopper that she was, had ensured perfectly sensible slippers and on the second try they found some that fitted quite well. So much the better. The school shoes… well they all looked reasonable but none of them quite fit.

“I’m sorry, these are the only ones that we have in this style,” the assistant told Alex.

“You don’t have any other black lace-ups?” he asked incredulously.

She shook her head. “They aren’t all that common in these sizes.”

“I didn’t think my feet were that small.”

His mother pinched the brow of her nose. “Could you give us a moment?” she asked the assistant.

“I’ll just put these back,” the woman said, gathering up the boxes of discarded shoes.

Alex watched her walk away and looked back to his mother. “Okay, Mum. I know that face,” he said resignedly. “What am I missing?”

She took a deep breath. “I’d hoped to talk about this at home, but your new shoe size is a fairly common one, but it’s a woman’s size.”

“Well, size is size, isn’t it?”

“No Alex. There are some differences in shape. At least at the moment, to get properly fitting shoes you’re going to need woman’s shoes.”

Alex buried his face in one hand. “Really?”

She put one hand reassuringly on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s hardly your fault. Stupid mutagene.” He sighed. “I suppose that’s why she offered me shoes with heels at first?”

His mother nodded. “And… I think she’s come to certain conclusions.”

“That I’m a mutant? Well, it was going to get out eventually so...”

“Not exactly, we might want to have a talk about it when we get home.”

“Is this going to be a problem at school?”

She paused. “Let’s talk about it in the car.”

Alex figured that was as good as he was going to get. If Mum wanted to talk in private then pressing her further wouldn’t do anything but annoy her. “So, what do we do about shoes?”

“There are other shops, but could you at least look over the other possible shoe styles the school will allow and see if there’s anything you can live with. I’d really rather you didn’t wear shoes that don’t fit you properly any longer, even if we replace them in another day or two.”

He looked at the shoe boxes. “They’re not exactly cheap.”

Mum patted him on the shoulder again. “I’m proud of your cost-consciousness, Alex, but the reason to save money is so that you have it for times like that.”

Alex sighed and walked over to the girls’ side of the shop to look at the shoes on display there. This felt so wrong…

* * *

The shoes he’d settled on probably weren’t that obviously a girl’s style, but Alex felt like they were practically marked as such in neon as he walked to the car. They had the very slightest hint of heel and rather than lacing they had straps across the top of the tongue, secured with a buckle on the outside of his ankles.

“That wasn’t so bad,” his mother said. “And those look just fine. No one will notice.”

“I’d like a second opinion,” Alex said with more than a hint of truculence.

Mrs. McKenzie used the key fob to unlock the car so Alex was able to get into the car as soon as they arrived. “So… conclusions.”

His mother closed her door and took a deep breath. “Firstly, I believe she thinks you’re adopted.”

Alex winced. “Okay… I guess cross-racial adoptions are more common than a mutant event that changes your race.” Actually, he hadn’t come across a single case of that no matter what he typed into google. But probably there had been cases. Mutants weren’t exactly a new thing.

“And she also believes you’re transsexual.”

“What?” He stared at her.

“It’s not that shocking these days, Alex.”

“No… I mean. What is that? I’ve heard the word but I don’t know what it means.”

His mother gazed at him for a moment and shook her head. “People who want to be genders other than those they were born.”

“So, if I for some reason wanted to be a girl and started calling myself Alexandra?”

“Exactly.”

Alex leaned back in his seat, considering it. “Okay. Not really my business if someone wants that. But why would she think that?”

“Well, your new face isn’t very…”

He looked at her blankly and then opened the sun-visor to squint up at the reflection of himself. “I look like a girl?”

“Not particularly, but you don’t look specifically like a boy either. If you were wearing your blazer that would be a hint.”

“Why?”

“Alex,” his mother said patiently. “Did you ever notice that Anna’s blazer buttons on the other side from yours?”

“No?”

“Women’s clothes button on the other side.”

He looked at his Mum’s blouse and realised she was right. The buttons were on the left side of the front, not the right. “But my shirt… oh, behind the tie.”

“Yes. So it wasn’t obvious, and your hair softens your face a bit.”

“I didn’t think it had changed very much.”

That got a laugh from his mother. “Dear, you know how the older women keep saying that you’d have really lovely hair if you were a girl.”

“Well… Ohhhh.”

“Yes. Ohhhh,” she mimicked him. “The poor woman in the shop thought you’re a girl who wants to be a boy.”

Alex rubbed his face. “That’s going to get weird at school.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I think so,” he said rather doubtfully.


	2. A Matter of Education

Things were not okay at school.

Mrs. McKenzie examined the photos one at a time and then handed them on to Alex. They weren’t pretty pictures.

His desk and his locker had been defaced with white writing. ‘Mutant go home’ was about the kindest phrase. Both had one use of ‘mutie’ with the ‘I’ replaced by a swastika.

“I’m extremely sorry.” Mr. Maurice was grim-faced. The headmaster wasn’t someone that Alex had had much to do with. “This behaviour isn’t acceptable in any way.”

“What did they write it with?” Alex asked, focusing on that rather than the words he was reading.

“Tippex correcting-fluid. It’s readily available and a nuisance to get rid of.” Mr. Maurice indicated the cardboard box containing the various possessions that had been left in both the locker and in the desk drawer. “So far as we can tell, none of the items inside were damaged or removed, but if you can see anything missing please let us know.”

Alex didn’t really leave much in either except school books and some stationary, but he looked through the box.

His mother watched him for a moment and then looked back to the headmaster. “Mr. Maurice, did you box that up in the expectation that Alex would be leaving the school?”

Alex was relieved to hear the headmaster’s immediate denial. “Not at all. Both the locker and the desk needed to be taken away for cleaning so they were emptied for that. The school has a strict non-discrimination policy and this is not only vandalism but public bigotry as well. If we find out who is responsible, then they’ll face out of school suspension and be on final warning for expulsion. We operate on a three-strike system for student discipline and this is two strikes.”

“If you find out.”

Mr. Maurice nodded, conceding the point. “At this point we have no witnesses. It isn’t even clear if it was the same people for both… incidents. Not every student in the school is a suspect, but we don’t know exactly which students were in the building at the time this was done. I doubt there are very many perpetrators, but we have over eight hundred students.”

Alex nodded in understanding. If even one percent of the body felt strongly enough about mutants to act like this, that would be more than half-a-dozen. He’d be outnumbered.

“I was hoping that Alex’s return would convince everyone that he was the same person he’s always been.” The headmaster shrugged helplessly. “Obviously, that won’t be the case. I’m working from Ministry of Education guidelines.”

“You don’t have any personal experience of teaching a mutant?” asked Alex’s mother calmly.

“No. It’s not an incredibly common event and so far my students have been safe.” Mr. Maurice leaned back in his chair. “That maniac driving through the village was hardly normal for the area. I hear that he wasn’t caught.”

“No.” Alex had had a vested interest in asking. “Somehow the police lost sight of him somewhere higher up the valley. There were two superheroes after him but they broke off to assist the rescue operations after he ran a car off a bridge before he got this far.”

“I see. People like that do nothing to help other mutants.”

“Some people don’t care about anyone but themselves, I suppose.” Alex closed the box. “Nothing seems to be missing or broken. So that’s something.”

The headmaster leant forwards again. “Alex, would you feel safe coming back here?”

“I think so. Harsh words aren’t exactly unheard of. I might hear something new and original… to me at least.” Alex saw both adults wince. “If someone tries pushing me down the stairs or something… Actually, I’m not sure. I might wind up in ‘Narnia’ again.”

“How so?” asked his mother.

“Well, both times I… teleported, I was in a certain amount of danger. If that happened again…”

“I may have misunderstood,” Mr. Maurice admitted. “I thought you teleported yourself and your brother home.”

“Not directly,” Alex corrected and clarified the actual chain of events. “It’s probably a good thing I was holding Angus when I fell or he might still be there,” he observed. “Wherever that is.”

“I hadn’t considered that. On the one hand it’d be good for you to have a way to avoid trouble if, god forbid, violence were to happen.” The man shook his head. “I’d come down like a ton of bricks on anyone who did that, but it’d be small comfort if you broke bones going down some stairs. You getting stranded could be worse though. I don’t suppose you have any background in surviving in the wild. In the Scouts?”

Alex shook his head. “I’m not a Scout.”

“That’s a shame, you can learn a lot of useful skills as a Scout.” Mr. Maurice rubbed his chin and then looked at Mrs. McKenzie. “I think I’d have to recommend that Alex get a grip on what he can and can’t do before he returns to class. Not because I think he’d deliberately cause problems – everyone agrees that he’s a responsible young man – but because accidents do happen.”

“I’m not sure where we’d even begin,” she admitted. “We don’t want him to vanish again and possibly never return.”

“That’s exactly my own concern. Everyone I’ve asked about this since I was told that your son had manifested says that these powers don’t go away. It’s better that he learns how to do what he does under controlled circumstances.”

“What sort of circumstances?”

Mr. Maurice opened a file on his desk and took out some pamphlets. “These are sent out every now and then to schools for cases like this one.” He found the one he was looking at and opened it. “There’s a phone number here to request government assistance in testing a new mutant’s capabilities safely.”

“Our tax money at work.”

“Many young mutants do have potentially destructive capabilities. I’d lean towards it being in the public’s best interests to avoid accidents. Would you like to call them now?”

Alex’s mother took the pamphlet, looked at the number and then took out her phone. “Hello?” she said after dialling. “Yes, my son has manifested. No, there’s no immediate crisis.” She gave her name and address and then paused. “You’re aware of Alex. Oh, the police, yes.” There was another hesitation and then, “Yes, I would like to hear about that… …that’s very efficient… …I suppose so.” She glanced at Alex and then nodded. “The weekend would be best but if it has to be a weekday… oh, yes that would be fine. Could you send me the details on this number? …that’s fine, thank you.”

She ended the call and blinked. “I’m not used to dealing with the government being so efficient.”

“Just the fact that you didn’t have to wait is impressive. Although it may be treated as an emergency line. After all, it could be used for the initial reports of someone manifesting. In which case, a quick response might be very important.”

The phone pinged and Mrs. McKenzie checked it. “And we have an appointment for Saturday. That being the case, would it be possible to get Alex’s homework that he’s missed and everything for the rest of the week?”

Alex made a face. He’d hoped she’d not think of that, but he hadn’t really thought it likely that she would.

* * *

The testing wasn’t near home. Alex got up early and used the shower right away before getting dressed in the clothes he’d left on his chair the previous morning. His father had still woken before him and breakfast was waiting for him when he got down to the kitchen-diner end of the house’s main room.

“I hope you’re ready for a long day,” Dad warned, cracking the shell on his own boiled egg.

“I’ll bring an extra book,” Alex answered. “And it has to be better than long queues and feeling like I want to throw up.”

“I suppose so,” Dad agreed. “There’s a bottle of water in the fridge. Put that in your bag to take with you.”

By the time they left, the rest of the family were just getting up to head out for their own expedition. Since Alex was having ‘a day out’, his mother was taking Angus and Anna to Alton Towers amusement park. Anna liked the rides and Angus hadn’t been before, so that should work out for them. Alex suspected that his father, who didn’t like to fly, was glad to pass up on the rides as well since they might make him feel just as unwell as they did Alex.

The drive wasn’t particularly memorable. Alex buried his nose in the Hawkmoon omnibus volume he’d brought with him – he found Moorcroft’s stories interesting but sometimes heavy going – and lost himself in the dark future of Europe as they drove across Lancashire.

“You might want to put that away now,” his father told him as the car turned off the road and approached a security barrier. Rolling down the window, Dad greeted the man at the booth. “Good morning. I’m here for my son’s testing.”

“Ah. Your name please?” the man lifted a tablet off the table in the booth.

“John McKenzie. This is my son, Alex.”

Alex looked at the security man and was pleased that he didn’t blink at the statement that they were father and son. He had to admit that they didn’t really look it anymore. In jeans and a men’s denim jacket he hopefully didn’t look like a girl. Anna had assured him that no girl in her right mind would wear the plaid shirt under his jacket so that was reassuring.

Rather than let them go in, the guard left the booth and gave the car a quick check – kneeling to check the underside and having the back opened so he could look inside – before he opened the barrier.

“Why was he being so careful?” Alex asked as they drove in.

“It might be a holdover from when this was a military base,” his father pointed out. “Or perhaps they have issues with supervillains trying to get in for some reason. I doubt that all they do here is support young mutants. There shouldn’t be all that many of you.”

“I think I’m the only one of me.”

“And a good thing too, but you know perfectly well what I meant.”

They pulled out outside a building that reminded Alex of nothing so much as his school’s gym, parking beside a white transit van. Putting his book away, he got out and stretched. Sitting in the car for almost two hours could be a bit constraining.

“Are you the other kid?”

He turned and his eyes went wide at the sight of a tall man waiting outside the building. He wore a close-fitting dark-red bodysuit with gear strapped to it, trimmed in white, and a domino mask covered his face. A jacket in the same dark-red hung open, half-covering the T-symbol on his chest.

“I… uh, yes.” Oh my god was this happening? Alex looked the man over twice before he realised that a hand was extended in friendly greeting.

“I’m Triumph, as I guess you can tell.”

Alex accepted the hand and shook. Triumph gripped his hand firmly and the shake was brisk but not perfunctory. “Uh, something clued me in, yes.” God, he sounded like such a nerd. But he was facing a real superhero! The same hand he’d just shaken could project energy bolts that could tear a car apart – at least, that was the speculation the last time he’d watched a video on the presumed heir to the mantle of Major Victory.

“Hi!” a girl greeted him from behind Triumph. “I’m Melissa. And you’re… a boy? I think.”

“Be nice,” Triumph said in a weary tone that didn’t quite mix with his heroic appearance.

“I am a boy, yes. I assume you don’t want me to prove it.”

Melissa made a face. “Eww, no.”

The superhero shook Dad’s hand too and Mr. McKenzie seemed just as starstruck as Alex. “They should be ready inside in a moment. We were a little early. If either of you want to use the facilities, they’re inside on the left.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

That ate up the next minute or two away from Melissa, which Alex was fine with. She was a fairly pretty girl, but he could live without that attitude.

“You’re going to have to deal with all sorts of people in life,” his father told him in the toilets. “First impressions can be misleading.” Then he looked at the sinks. “And no, I won’t let you leave that hand unwashed forever as a reminder of meeting Triumph. It’s not hygienic.”

“DAAAD!”

When they returned, there was another man standing with Triumph. He was older, maybe midway between Triumph and Alex’s dad in age, and wore a lab coat over his roll-neck sweater and slacks. “Mr. McKenzie? And this must be Alex.”

“That’s right.” There was another round of shaking hands.

“I’m Doctor Wainwright. I’ll be handling the testing today. If you’d like to come with me, we’ll pick up Mr Johnson from the EUIMA and get started.”

“Eumea?”

“European Union Institute of Mutant Affairs. Basically, he’s here to make sure your civil rights are respected. Sometimes I get the impression that the EU doesn’t entire trust the UK for some reason.”

Even Alex had paid enough attention to the news to know that there was a heck of a lot more going on between the UK and the other EU members than that at the moment, but there was no point in arguing the point.

“Why are we being tested together?” asked Melissa. “Does he shrink too?”

“Shrink?” asked Alex.

“Duh.” Melissa blurred and for a moment he thought she’d vanished the way he must have back on the road the first time he teleported, but then he saw that she was still there, but was now only a couple of inches tall, hovering in the air around about waist height. She zipped back towards the door but Triumph had stepped back and casually placed one hand to block her, moving it quickly as she tried to evade her.

The flying girl reversed course rather than fly into the superhero’s hand and returned to her previous height. “What’s the point in testing us together if we do different things?”

“We’ll be testing a lot of things besides your more obvious powers,” Dr. Wainwright explained, apparently unbothered by Melissa’s display. “Being a mutant can change quite a bit about you that you might not be aware, and if we’re going to break out the testing gear then it makes sense to get those tests done at the same time for multiple people. Besides, you never know when seeing one mutant using their powers might lead to a second mutant getting new ideas about what they can do with their own.”

Alex nodded in understanding. “That’s pretty cool, being able to fly,” he admitted to Melissa.

“It’s great, yes. If I was allowed to.”

“It still counts as powered flight, even if you’re not using an engine,” Triumph told her. Alex got the impression he’d said it before, much like a teacher having to repeat a lesson for someone that hadn’t been paying attention. “Once you have a license for flight, we can revisit that issue.”

“So what do you do?” the girl asked, brushing off Triumph’s correction.

“Teleporting, I guess.”

“That must be pretty handy.” She glanced over at Triumph and then her eyes narrowed. “So did you teleport out of Africa or something?”

“…what?”

“Well, he’s not your real dad, is he? And you’re black.”

“Well, yeah he is my Dad,” Alex said indignantly. “I’ve never been to Africa.”

Triumph smiled slightly. “First appearances can be deceiving, Melissa. And jumping to conclusions can lead to embarrassment.”

“I didn’t jump to a conclusion. I took one little step and there it was,” she said indignantly. “What am I supposed to think about a black kid with a white dad?”

“Does that happen very much?” asked Alex’s dad.

Triumph nodded in confirmation. “Africa’s just not as safe for young people as the western world, so there are more mutants per capita there. Some of them wind up fuelling the warlord problems there, but many of the others look for better futures elsewhere. Unfortunately, some of them turn to crime rather than taking advantage of the legitimate channels to get their feet under them here.”

“And on that happy note,” Dr. Wainwright announced, “Here we are.”

They entered a gymnasium where a man in a suit was waiting. “Eric.”

“Jim.” Dr. Wainwright confirmed. “Everyone, this is Mr. Johnson from the EU. He’s here to help.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Mr. Johnson checked his phone. “So this is Mr. McKenzie and Ms. Saunders?”

Alex hesitated, he was used to his father being ‘Mr. McKenzie’, not himself. “Yes.”

“Alright. Has anyone explained what happens with any information gathered on your abilities here?”

“Not specifically,” Alex’s dad said.

Triumph nodded. “It made more sense to wait until we’re here. Under EU regulations, all data gathered today will be compiled into three copies and other records will be destroyed – that’s why we’ll be taking all notes on paper since it’s easier to verify that that’s been disposed of. You each get copies of your own data, one copy goes to the UK archives, anonymised, for census records and the like. The last copy goes to the EUIMA files. The police can request access to it if you’re suspected of criminal action in the future but otherwise, they’re kept confidential.”

Melissa snorted somewhat cynically, which Alex thought might be a fair assessment. People got hacked all the time, it was a fairly regular issue on the news. Well, it probably wouldn’t be a huge issue for him. It wasn’t as if he had plans to be a superhero... Teleporting wasn’t exactly a power that would do him much good in a fight… just for running away from them.

“We’ll start with some basic physical tests,” Dr. Wainwright told them. He picked up a couple of plastic-wrapped packages and handed one to Melissa and the other to Alex. “Go get changed behind the screens and we’ll get started.”

“You don’t have any cameras back there?” asked the girl suspiciously.

All three men gave her harsh looks.

“Look, a girl has to watch out for herself.”

Alex shrugged and went back behind one of the two screens, which were nothing more than three panels set up around a small, padded bench. Opening the package he found a T-shirt and shorts with a drawstring waistband. Replacing his clothes with them didn’t take long, although he was glad of the drawstring because both would otherwise have been significantly too large for him.

For some reason it took Melissa a couple of minutes longer than Alex to get changed and she gave him a sour look as she rejoined them.

The first few exercises were the sort of simple gymnastics Alex had suffered through in Physical Education classes. Do ten sit-ups, ten press-ups, ten jumping jacks… that sort of thing. Dr. Wainwright timed them and checked their pulses and temperatures after each set of exercises. “All good so far,” he said brightly. “Let’s do the run next.” He indicated the oval track laid out across the floor of the gym, partly overlaid by other markings, some of which were recognisable to Alex (a basketball court, for example) and others weren’t. “If you could start over there and we’ll time you both for five laps.”

“Five laps!” Melissa protested.

“It’s only a kilometre,” Triumph told her. “Do you want me to run as well?”

“You probably run further than that before breakfast every day.”

“After breakfast, but yes. I’m in that sort of profession.” The masked man joined the two teenagers on the track, not bothering with any sportswear.

“On your marks, go!” called Doctor Wainwright, triggering something on a complicated looking stopwatch.

Alex sprinted briefly to try to get ahead of Melissa – he had a nasty idea she might be one of those girls who was, intentionally or otherwise, free with her elbows when running. Despite putting some effort in, that still left him behind Triumph, who had practically blasted off and was well ahead of both of them.

Trying to keep up with that pushed Alex to keep the sprint up for half the first lap, which was probably a mistake and he was already falling further behind so he slowed down to something more sustainable.

A moment later he heard: “Get your skinny butt out of my way,” and Melissa passed him on the left, arms pumping and elbow wide. Alex had to twist a bit to avoid that, although he managed to stay on the track.

Okay, it was on now. He pushed up behind her, matching her pace. If she thought she was going to outrun him then she might be right but he was at least going to take his best shot at beating her.

For now though, he was just going to hold on behind her and get his breath back from that earlier sprint. His lungs didn’t seem to be aching the way he’d expected and if he had something in reserve for later it would probably be a good idea.

At the end of their first lap, Triumph was almost half a lap ahead and Melissa seemed to pick up the pace again, trying to close that up. Alex followed her, not worrying about anything but keeping up the distance. He tried to focus on her shoulders for marking that, not on any other part of her – not that baggy shorts gave much of a view from any direction.

Despite the attempt, the two teens were still just short of three laps done when Triumph, having lapped them twice, finished his fifth lap.

Just to add insult to that, the superhero then took off and flew next to them as they struggled through their fourth lap. Alex was definitely feeling it now but he thought he had the legs for one more lap.

“Kids these days,” Triumph said with a grin. “Too much time on the couch watching TV.”

“Oh, shut up!” Melissa gasped.

Seeing she was distracted, Alex pushed himself harder and darted around her left side.

There was an annoyed squeal from the girl, which sounded entirely too much like the boar and almost shook him for a moment, but he shook his head, feeling his hair flap around his shoulders, and focused on rushing the last lap.

“On your…” Melissa gasped, “left…” He saw her out of the corner of his eyes but although she drew level with him on the last curve, he managed to push a bit harder and made it across the line ahead of her.

“Oww…” She complained. “My legs are killing me.”

“Keep going, just at a walk,” Triumph told them. “One more lap to let your legs cool down. You don’t want to cramp up.”

Alex made a face but he knew that the man was right, so he obediently walked around once more. Melissa elbowed him discreetly as she followed suit. “You jerk, you didn’t have to make a race of it.”

“I didn’t. You did,” he grumbled.

“I did not. Stupid competitive boys. You’ve always got to go ‘oh, I can’t let a guuuurl, beat me’,” she snorted.

“Yeah, and who elbowed their way past me?”

“Did not!”

Alex rolled his eyes. What was she, twelve?

They moved over to weight benches, not something Alex had encountered before. With Triumph spotting each in turn, they started out lifting fairly manageable weights as often as they could in a minute, which Melissa turned into another contest and practically radiated smugness about winning.

“Alright, let’s see how much you can lift,” Dr Wainwright told them. “Don’t rush this. Every time you can lift the bar to full extension, we’ll add more weights to it for the next lift. If you’re struggling at all, let us know right away.”

Alex figured he had a pretty good idea about where he’d be in that. A couple of summers ago he’d been able to lift Angus and another boy whose combined weights were about his own… something like a hundred and forty pounds. He was larger now (Angus was much larger) but he doubted he was very much stronger. He’d never claimed to be particularly athletic.

Dr. Wainwright didn’t actually tell him how much weight was on the bars though. He just made an acknowledging noise and added a little more each time. In the end, Alex felt his arms trembling a little under the weight. “I think that might be a bit much,” he declared.

Triumph had his hands under the bar, ready to catch it if need be. “Do you think you can lift it or is it really too much?”

“I…” Alex pushed his arms up and just barely held them straight for a half-second before they slumped again. “Just barely,” he admitted, not too proud to accept Triumph’s help putting the bar back down on the rack.

“That’ll do fine,” Dr. Wainwright assured him. “Alright, Melissa. Your turn.”

The girl took Alex’s place on the bench and he watched as Triumph removed most of the weights and the tests started again. There was more care taken than he’d thought. At first sizeable weights were added but as Melissa started having to work at it, smaller weights were added. Alex was beginning to suspect that there was a lot more thinking behind the tests than was immediately apparent.

As Melissa struggled with her next rep he counted up the weights for himself and blinked when he realised she was lifting almost a hundred pounds. That was pretty good. She must be in decent shape, he thought.

“Can you keep going?” asked Triumph.

“Of course,” she told him confidently and Dr. Wainwright added a five pound weight to one end of the bar before putting another on the second end.

Wait, Alex realised, I’m only counting one side… holy cow that means she’s lifting over two hundred pounds if she has this.

Melissa did in fact, have this, but sweat was streaming down her face and this time when Dr Wainwright added a mere two extra pounds to each side, Melissa couldn’t quite reach full extension.

“Okay, let’s try with just a hair less. One less.” Replacing the last weights was enough that Melissa managed to just barely lift it all the way up.

“Ow, my arms,” she whined.

Alex helped her up. “That was really great, you were up over two hundred pounds,” she told her.

“Don’t be stupid, that’s more than twice as much as I weigh.”

Mr. Johnson shook his head. “No, he’s right. It’s not unusual for mutants to have some physical capabilities towards the upper end of the usual range, if not higher. You lifted almost as much, Mr. McKenzie.”

“What?”

The overseer (Alex thought that that was a fair description) pointed to the weights still on the bar. “You had just as many ten-pound weights on the bar, so you’re very nearly as strong as Ms. Saunders is.”

“Nearly!” Melissa said with a laugh, apparently in better humour now that she’d beaten Alex at something. The physical tests went back and forth for much of the morning, with the two asking Dr. Wainwright and comparing their results with eagerness that Alex suspected amused the four adults present. More often than not, Melissa seemed to come out ahead on strength and resilience, which was a little surprising to Alex but maybe he was being sexist about that. On the other hand, he was faster over just about any of the runs they did and his reflexes and flexibility seemed a bit higher.

“Alright.” Dr. Wainwright checked his watch. “That’s all of this part. The two of you can change back into your own clothes now. There’s a shower if you really want one, but just one so you’ll need to take turns.”

“Dibs!” Melissa called out.

Alex grinned. “Ladies first,” he conceded and let her fetch her clothes and head through the door first. A shower didn’t seem like a terrible idea, it had been a very sweaty morning. Also one that worked up a hunger, he realised as his stomach grumbled.

Triumph laughed at that, but smacked Alex lightly on the shoulder. “Mutant appetites are always a touch higher,” he said reassuringly. “Not many of us ever get fat.”

“I’d imagine you have an active lifestyle,” Alex’s dad pointed out. “Alex is a bit more sedentary.”

“Even then. The brain uses energy too.” Triumph folded his arms. “So, I take it Alex wasn’t always ethnically African?”

“No.” Mr. McKenzie looked over at Alex. “He takes more after his mother’s side of the family so he was quite a bit fairer than I am – corn-blond with white skin and freckles.”

The superhero nodded. “Honestly, that’s a little bit unusual. Not in a bad way, but most mutants either don’t change much, or shift towards some sort of idealised view of how they think they should look.”

There was an implied question there and Alex decided to answer it. “I didn’t ever think about being black one way or another.”

“Hmm. The other extreme, which fortunately isn’t common with initial mutation events, is decidedly inhuman changes.”

“I gather they can be life-threatening?” asked Alex’s father.

“It’s not unheard of.”

“And you said initial mutation events. That was… quite specific.”

Triumph gave him a rueful look. “You caught that. It’s hard to get exact statistics but most reputable authorities say it’s like rolling a dice multiple times, at best. You only get lucky so often. Those who’ve gone through multiple events are more at risk, in my opinion.”

“And correspondingly more powers and abilities, as I understand it.”

“That’s correct,” Dr. Wainwright cut in. “So, don’t go looking for danger, young Mr. McKenzie. We have entirely too many cases in the world of mutants who’ve been through too much and were left physically or mentally disabled as a result.”

“I really don’t want any more danger,” Alex told him as the door opened to the showers and Melissa came out, fully dressed again. “Just seeing the Black Paladin once was more than enough for me.”

* * *

Over lunch – fish and chips, with Triumph insisting that both the teenagers have two fish along with their chips and hounding them to clear their plates – they were required to fill out the first of three booklets of problems. Mostly logic problems but some was maths and simple English comprehension.

Neither of the two really needed to be pushed to eat. Alex was surprised by how fast he went through the meal, even with one hand mostly busy marking answers in the booklet. They were timed on this as well as the following two booklets, he noticed. At least for those two they were allowed to give them their full attention and Alex felt a little smug that he was faster than Melissa on all three.

“We’ll be parting ways from here,” Triumph said to Melissa. “I’ll be overseeing the next step of Alex’s training. Be good for Dr. Wainwright.”

Alex blinked. He’d thought that Triumph was specifically here to watch out for Melissa, the way his father was for him.

“Freedom at last,” Melissa mouthed to him from behind Triumph’s back.

Triumph led Alex and his father out to the van and opened it up. It surprised Alex for a moment that a superhero would have driven here in something that looked like a handyman’s transportation but that was probably the idea.

“I rather got the impression that you were here to supervise Miss Humphreys,” Dad half-asked and half-said.

The man shook his head. “I’m doing double-duty to make sure she comes here and goes home afterwards, but the main reason I’m here is for Alex.”

“Me?” That didn’t make sense to Alex. Why would a well-known superhero make time to handle the powers testing for someone that he’d never met?

“That’s right.” Triumph pulled a rucksack out of the racks of equipment inside the van. “Here, put this on.”

Alex eyed the bulging rucksack for a dubious moment but then remembered that he’d lifted considerably more than his own bodyweight back in the gym, this shouldn’t be a problem. Accepting the bag, he swung it up onto one shoulder and almost fell over as the heavy bag pulled him after it.

“Careful now,” Triumph said tolerantly. “You’re strong but you can still throw yourself off balance.”

“What’s in it?” asked his father.

“A small tent, a sleeping bag, some other simple survival gear and about a week’s ration bars,” Triumph said matter-of-factly. “I don’t intend for you to get stranded wherever it is that you wound up on your first time teleporting, but if it does then I want you to have everything you need to either get to civilisation or at least feed yourself until you figure out how to teleport home. Please don’t take that rucksack off unless you really need to.”

“I don’t suppose that there’s a gun in here?” asked Alex. “In case I run into that boar again?”

“Have you ever used a gun before?”

Alex shook his head.

“Then you’re considerably more likely to hurt yourself with one than you are any wild animals,” Triumph told him in a matter of fact fashion, strapping on another rucksack. “If it happens again and you’re on your own, your plan of hiding in a tree until it went away was a good one. And if at all possible, I’ll be with you to deal with that sort of problem.”

“It does seem a little bit chancy,” commented his father.

Triumph nodded apologetically. “Unfortunately, you’re right. With most powers, we at least know where the testing is likely to take us and we can prepare accordingly. Here we’ll be stepping into the unknown, which is one reason I’m here.” He produced a leather cuff and attached it to the wrist of his jacket with a cord. “Put this around your wrist, Alex. And tighten it until it’s just barely uncomfortable.”

Alex took the cuff and examined it. “You’re putting me on a leash?” He waited until Triumph was about to justify the idea and then nodded. “Good idea.”

The superhero closed his mouth again, but he was smiling as Alex strapped the cuff on and buckled it securely around his wrist.

“So, what now?”

“Now the ball’s in your court, Alex. Whatever you did last time to travel, please do it again.”

“Panic?” Alex asked, not entirely rhetorically.

“Not usually the best plan,” advised Triumph. “Try focusing on somewhere and trying to will yourself there.”

Alex nodded and considered where to pick. Maybe home would be best. He’d teleported there before. He tried focus on the garden, but there was no immediate result.

“Try closing your eyes and building an image of it in your head,” Triumph suggested calmly.

He tried, but it was surprisingly hard. He knew where he meant, but the details escaped him. He knew there were two trees, but remembering their branches was harder, and he found it difficult to recall exactly where the rows of vegetables in his mother’s vegetable patch – the family farm, she called it in a private joke – lay. Alex hadn’t realised how little attention he paid to details like that until he tried to recall them.

“Not going so well?”

“No.”

“Maybe try somewhere else?”

Alex nodded without opening his eyes. Okay, maybe not home. He’d dreamed of the other place of Narnia, all day before he wound up there. That might be something to do with it. So perhaps if he thought of that, of the castle…

Not that he’d actually seen a castle there, but the woods…

Alex didn’t think he’d ever forget that clearing in the woods or the boar that had tried to kill him. The image jumped to mind almost effortlessly. “I think I have it.”

“Okay, can you take us there?”

He almost asked how but that was his part of this to figure out. Could he imagine himself there? With Triumph, for that matter, with his father?

Trying to ‘edit’ the mental image to include them didn’t work. They weren’t there and somehow he knew it. You can’t get somewhere by just wanting it, you have to…

Alex opened his eyes. “I have an idea. I think I need to move to get there.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Triumph agreed. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

“Lay on.”

“What?”

“It’s ‘lay on’, not ‘lead on’.” Alex explained. “It was sort of… let me have it.” He shrugged, embarrassed. “We did Macbeth in school recently.”

“Ah, I got The Merchant of Venice inflicted on me when I was at school,” Triumph said with a slight shudder. “Almost turned me off Shakespeare entirely. Lay on, then.”

“Uh.” Alex suspected that his ears would be turning pink if that was even possible anymore. “And I was holding my brother’s hand when I did it, both times. So…”

“So let’s try to recreate that as much as we can, this time,” Triumph agreed.

Alex nodded, glad that he didn’t have to outright ask someone to hold his hand as if he was a nervous child. Triumph reached out and took hold of his left wrist, gripping around the cuff. “Lock your fingers around my wrist,” he instructed.

Exactly how Angus and I were holding onto each other, Alex thought. He closed his eyes again, envisaging the clearing. Okay, not throwing myself at the ground unless I have to, but what happens if I… step…

He was standing on yielding soil rather than the tarmac of the parking lot. Alex opened his eyes and saw the clearing around him. There was a grunt of surprise from beside him and he looked, seeing Triumph was by him.

“Well that worked,” the superhero said, craning his neck around to look in every direction in turn. He brushed a lock of black hair back from his face with his free hand. “Okay then. Well done.”

Alex looked around for any sign of the boar. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to have stayed around.

“No sign of your friend from before,” Triumph commented as if he’d read Alex’s mind. “But it’s been a week or so.”

“Unless time is different here,” Alex pointed out, thinking of the literary Narnia.

But the man shook his head. “No, the time on your phone was still right when you came back, so there shouldn’t be any significant variation in time between here and home.”

“Shall I try to take us back?”

“In a moment,” Triumph decided. He let go of Alex’s hand, reached back and took a large handset, something like Alex’s mobile phone if it had been on steroids. “Let’s see if I can get some idea of where we are first.”

Alex watched him adjusting the handset and then looked around. Seeing a stick lying on the clearing floor he picked it up. Was this the same one he’d been holding last time? He’d dropped it to climb the tree so it could still be here.

“Well, we’re not getting any satellite signal,” Triumph declared. “And this thing should pick them up even if we were a mile deep under the ocean, so that probably means we’re not anywhere on Earth.”

“Really?”

“Yep.” Triumph lifted up off the ground and then looked down at the cord. “Oh, right. Better not try to just fly up above the trees with you tied to me.”

“Should I take it off?”

“Not just yet. You said that there was a coast, do you think you can find it again?”

“Sure, why?”

“If I can get an idea of the sun, I can make an estimate of the time of day. Ideally, I’d like to come back here at night and see if we can recognise any of the stars.”

Alex frowned. “You’re saying, this might be another world… in our universe.”

“I’ve no idea.” Triumph grinned broadly. “Exciting, isn’t it?”

“I guess.” Alex pointed in the direction he’d declared as south previously. “The sea… or lake, I’m not sure which… should be this way.”

“Let’s go then.”

It wasn’t a particularly long walk under the trees before they reached the edge of the woods and the rocky shoreline that Alex remembered, although this time the water was lower, exposing more rocks and more mud. “I think the tide’s further out than it was last time.”

Triumph nodded. “That would likely make this a sea or ocean then, not a lake.” He held up the handset and pressed a button. “Okay. If I can get a second picture in, say, an hour, then that should give me some idea of how long the day is here and how the times relate to ours.”

“What do we do now?”

“Let’s start by going back,” the man told him. “Same as last time, but try to focus on your father.”

“What if I can’t?”

“Then we’ll figure something else out,” Triumph said matter-of-factly. “We’re big league explorers, Alex. We’ve come to another world, we should probably be named in the same breath as Buzz Aldrin or Mike Collins. Getting home? Pfft.” He made a dismissive gesture.

“Okay.” Alex held out his hand again and Triumph took it.

Imagining his father took more effort than Alex expected. He’d known him all his life, after all! But for some reason, recalling his appearance was no easier than his attempts to visualise the garden.

Frustrated, he tried the garden again… and this time it sprang readily to mind. Ever row of stakes for vegetables, each branch of the trees, the red brick walls around it…

Alex took a step almost without thinking.

“Whoa.”

He opened his eyes at Triumph’s voice and realised that he was standing in the garden at home.

“Now, where are we?”

“In my garden at home,” Alex admitted. “Sorry.”

“No, no. This is fine.” Triumph looked around again, then took out the handset. “And… we have connection. So you can get back here. That’s good. Very good. And you crossed most of the county in about ten minutes. Even if it’s not direct teleportation it’s still pretty fast.”

He punched a button. “I’ll just call in and let your father know where we are.”

Alex looked at the stick in his hand. This is from another world, he thought. Stepping away as Triumph made his call, he pushed it into the soil of one of the flower beds, leaving it sticking up as evidence of his return.

“Okay, all done,” Triumph confirmed after a moment. “Do you want to try again? Maybe focus on the gym?”

“Okay.”

It was not okay. Alex scowled as the gym failed to come together as an image in his head. “It’s not working.”

“Trial and error usually takes a while,” the superhero said calmly. “Okay, can you try visualising some different places. I have a theory.”

“What theory?”

“Try first and I’ll explain. First, try just the other end of the garden. You can look right at it.”

Alex tried it. Eyes open, eyes shut, it made no difference. The only way he could get over there was by walking there. Taking normal steps, not the steps that had moved him from place to place – from world to world! – four times so far.

“Okay. Don’t worry about it. I expected this.” Triumph seemed pleased. “Now, try visualising the other world again.”

He closed his eyes impatiently, thought back to the shoreline and almost without thinking, took a step…

And he was there. “I did it!”

Nothing but the water, the wind and a distant gull answered him.

“Triumph?” Alex looked around. There was no sign of the superhero. “Uh oh.”

Taking the cord still secured to his wrist, Alex was able to pull it all to himself, but it ended with a clip, the same one that should be attached to Triumph’s sleeve.

Alex looked around, the shadows under the tree branches seeming far more threatening now that he was alone there. “Okay, I can do this,” he tried to psyche himself up. “Just visualise the garden… same as before… aaaaaand, step!”

“Step?” asked Triumph, bemusedly staring at Alex, who was back in the garden again.

The boy exhaled in relief. “I thought I might have lost you.” He held up the cord.

“Mmmm. That doesn’t seem to work. But really? ‘Step’?”

“Well it’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?” explained Alex.

“It’s exactly what you’re doing,” Triumph agreed. “But there’s such a thing as style, Alex!”

Alex shrugged. What mattered was that it worked. So if he ended up in ‘Narnia’ again, he could get home. Problem solved.

Triumph sighed and shook his head. “Anyway, it seems you can step back and forth into that world but not directly between places in this world. So let’s see if you can travel to other parts of this world as destinations. Otherwise you might have issues if your parents ever sell their house.”

Taking Triumph’s hand, Alex crossed back to the shoreline of the other world.

“Same place again,” Triumph noted. “We might want to work on that. But for now, try to focus on the gym.”

“Okay.” This time the image came together easily, the lines on the gym floor, the screens, the various equipment arranged for the testing…

Alex stepped across… and two inches of Melissa Saunders smacked right into his face.

Stumbling backwards, Alex almost managed keep his balance but then Melissa reverted to her full size and he was knocked to the floor by the girl landing on him.

“Ow,” he muttered. He could have done without smacking his head against the floor like that. Fortunately, there had been an exercise mat out on that part of the floor.

“What are you doing here?” Melissa demanded angrily.

“I was trying to step into the gym,” Alex explained.

“Right in front of me!?”

“No, that was an accident.” And he was uncomfortably aware that she’d landed straddling his chest. At least she wasn’t wearing a skirt, but even so…

“Melissa.” Triumph seemed to be restraining laughter with some difficulty. “Can you get off Alex, please?”

The girl seemed to realise her position all of a sudden. Alex got a brief image of Melissa’s reddening face before she shrank down to her tiny form and zipped away through the air.

“Alex, are you okay?” asked Dr. Wainwright.

“I think so.” He rubbed the back of his head.

Triumph offered Alex his hand. “Were you aiming for inside the gym or was this an accident?”

“You said the gym, not the parking lot.”

The dark-haired man nodded in comprehension. “I’ll try to be more specific then. Let’s go let your father know we’re back and take a quick break.”

“Do you mind if we walk there the old-fashioned way?”

“That’s okay Alex, that’s what I meant.”

* * *

Another round of tests later, including an attempt to take Mr. Johnson along as part of a human chain by having Triumph hold onto him (which failed) and by having Alex hold onto him (which succeeded), they had some ground rules worked out.

“So,” Triumph explained to Mr. McKenzie and Mr. Johnson. “Alex can transfer himself from this world to that world and back, but not directly from place to place in this world.”

“That doesn’t seem to be too limiting.”

“It isn’t. Destinations are interesting, he seems to have to always return to the same place in the other world that he left from. Which is odd, because it doesn’t appear to be the case in this world. That’s something you might be able to work on, Alex. If you have to come back here because of the boar or something like that, not being able to go back until it leaves your point of departure could be a problem.”

Alex nodded in understanding.

“Since you’re limited to places in this world you’ve been to, it might be that if you explore that world a bit more you might get past that limit there, but right now you should probably be careful about that.”

“Agreed,” Alex’s father agreed firmly.

“Also, you need to be able to move around to transfer; and going to places further away in this world seems to require at least a little bit more movement there.” Triumph rubbed his face. “It’s a pity you’ve not been to places further away than London, because we don’t have enough data to determine how much that’s going to be for longer distances, but at the moment it seems likely that you could in theory get to anywhere you know in this world without any real difficulty.”

Alex shrugged.

“I get airsick,” his Dad explained. “And my wife gets seasick. It makes foreign holidays difficult.”

“Well, it’s something to think about later. Although then there will be the legal issues in crossing international boundaries. Not too bad with Europe right now, but…” Triumph made a helpless gesture.

“It seems a bit extreme as a way of having a foreign holiday,” Alex’s dad said. “Although I suppose it could save in travel costs as well.”

“Yes, it opens up a lot of possibilities,” Mr Johnson agreed. “If the legal issues can be dealt with.” He leant back a little and looked at Alex. “If I could ask, what are you planning for school?”

“I… assumed I’d be going back to school normally.”

His father nodded. “Are you suggesting something else?”

The EUIMA representative nodded. “I’m a little concerned about the nature of Alex’s physical changes. On the face of it they seem quite benign, but they are unusual and so is the way his power seems to work. Either of those would be cause for concern, but between the two it may not be safe for him to attend an ordinary school.”

“But we’ve just established I can control my power,” Alex protested.

“I know,” Mr Johnson agreed. “My main concern in that regard is that to someone like - well the Black Paladin, for one example - your power would represent a very easy way to escape from pursuit after one of his attacks. I realise that you wouldn’t help him voluntarily but that might not stop him, or someone like him, from trying to coerce you.”

Alex bit at his lip. That wasn’t easy to argue against.

“And the other concern is that there may be changes to your body that we haven’t detected. Admittedly it’s probably not the case, but the unusual nature suggests that you might experience further changes if you have another trigger - and let’s be honest, if you were targeted in the way we just discussed, then you might very well experience one or more further manifestations.”

“Are you suggesting Dr. Franck’s school?” asked Dr. Wainwright.

Triumph made a face but said nothing.

“Who is Dr. Franck?” asked Mr. McKenzie cautiously.

Johnson and Wainwright both started to speak and then Wainwright gestured for Johnson to continue.

“Dr. Franck is a physician specialising in helping mutants with problems relating to their powers or the transformations their bodies have undergone. Several years ago…”

“Ten years,” Triumph specified.

“Thank you. Ten years ago, he proposed that given the increased risk faced by teenage mutants that he set up a school where they could be educated safely and in easy reach of his medical services if they were needed. He was able to get investors together and the school is a going concern. It’s a private institution but cases like Alex are often directed to him.”

“Wouldn’t that just put lots of targets for unscrupulous people all in one place?” his father asked.

“Not so much,” Triumph conceded. “You see, Franck doesn’t just offer medical support to people on the right side of the law. A lot of supervillains owe him favours – he’s the closest thing they have to medical insurance. Very few people in that community want to alienate him and those who aren’t worried about it, do have to worry that he could call in favours from some of the big names to retaliate.”

“So, he’s a criminal?” asked Alex. “Or… aiding and abetting?”

“In a very technical sense, yes. But since he’s also offering help to those on the right side of the law, his hospice and the school are considered neutral ground. It’s very unlikely that Alex would be targeted there.”

“And he’s also very keen on teaching his students how to protect themselves against being exploited in that way,” Johnson added. “As well as provide a proper education.”

“Are you going to offer this to Melissa as well?” asked Alex curiously. She wasn’t with them at the moment, having left to use the facilities.

“Melissa has been accepted by St. Erisian’s,” Triumph told him. “It’s a girl’s school in the home counties that’s quite welcoming of mutants… if anything, too welcoming. It’s been investigated three times for teaching their students to be criminals, but we haven’t hung anything on them yet.”

“And this all goes on?” Alex’s father gave him a shocked look.

“We need proof before we can do anything. And they’re very good at not giving us anything actionable.”

Alex checked his watch. “Um… how long do you think Melissa will be in the toilet?”

Triumph looked at him, blinked and then sighed and pulled out a small device from his jacket. “The tracking bracelet I gave her is in range,” he said and adjusted a control. “And the tracker I planted on her shoe is… almost a mile away.” He exhaled, sounding a bit frustrated. “Right, I’ll have to go fetch her.”

The red-clad superhuman took off from the ground before reaching the door and flew out through them, leaving them swinging back and forth in his wake.

Mr. McKenzie looked after him. “He has a thankless job,” he noted.

“No one forced him to do it,” Mr Johnson said blandly. “One hopes that it remains voluntary.”

“Mutants haven’t been drafted in the UK since the 1950s.”

Johnson nodded. “Quite. It’s not something that anyone in the western world wants to return to. Dr. Franck isn’t the whitest hat in the world, Mr. McKenzie, but there’s nowhere your son would be safer than at his school.”

Alex looked at his Dad and they shrugged at each other.

“It can’t hurt to find out more,” the elder McKenzie said at last. “What’s it called?”

“Amerigo Vespucci Memorial High School.”


	3. It's (Not) The Only Way To Travel

“Amerigo Vespucci was one of the first European explorers in the western hemisphere and is credited with establishing that the Americas were distinct continents and not part of the East Indies as had originally been thought,” Alex read out loud. “In the same way, Amerigo Vespucci Memorial seeks to explore our students’ potential and find the truths behind our assumptions regarding their special talents and abilities.”

“That’s a very idealised vision,” his mother said as they sat around the dining table. “But it’s rather short on specifics. Where is it exactly? Minnesota’s somewhere in the mid-western United States, isn’t it?”

“The school’s right up against the Canadian border,” Mr. McKenzie confirmed. “The nearest city is Winnipeg, across the border. Alex, can you find it on a map?”

Alex opened up Google Maps and brought up the state of Minnesota. From there he zoomed in, tabbing back to the school’s webpage for reference twice. “It’s here,” he said at last. “There’s no street view, but the aerial view’s okay.”

His mother accepted the tablet and studied the shingled roofs, tarmac roads and a handful of lawns, surrounded by dense tree foliage. “It’s a sizeable place,” she conceded and zoomed out. “It’s right in the middle of nowhere though. Just a lake on one side and forest on the other. Is there even a road to it?” She found an overlay that displayed the roads, showing that there was one small road linking the school to the larger road network of Canada and only through that back into the United States.

“I suppose being so isolated makes it safe for young mutants to use their powers without being identified,” Dad pointed out. “And it’s not as if Alex is really keen on going to town much.”

“Except for bookshops,” Alex corrected.

“Oh yes.” His father smiled briefly. “And libraries. You’ll need to rely on school facilities. Do Amazon even deliver there?”

“Apparently they have a very good internet connection for staying in touch. You might have to convert to a Kindle at last,” Mum said, having gone back to the web-page. “What sort of educational standards do they have…?”

“I doubt they have a list of graduates who went on to Oxbridge.” Alex’s school had plaques in the main hall listing dozens of students who’d gone on to Oxford or Cambridge over the years, usually adding one or two each year.

His mother chuckled. “No, but they do have a list of universities and colleges graduates have gone on to… They have had someone go on to Cambridge, actually. The Sorbonne, Harvard, MIT… quite a long list with some good schools.”

“The University of Newcastle?” his father asked.

“I don’t see it.”

“Oh well, can’t be all that good then,” he said drily. Alex’s parents had met at, and graduated from, that university. Alex had been born in the same city, although he barely remembered it. They’d moved away when he was still very young.

“Never mind, dear. Maybe Alex could be the first.”

They exchanged amused looks and Alex rolled his eyes. “I’m not really keen on going to America for school.”

“I’m not really happy about you being that far away either,” Mrs. McKenzie admitted candidly. “But if it’s a matter of your safety then we can’t ignore the possibility.”

“They do cater to international students.” His father took the tablet back. “I saw here… Ah, over one hundred international students last year. And it’s not a very large school, fifty to seventy students per year.”

“So less than five hundred students? That’s not that small.”

Dad shook his head. “It’s an American high school. They only cover the last four years, although there’s apparently a small junior division catering specifically to patients at the hospice that are in that age bracket. But about two hundred to two hundred and fifty would be closer.”

“Does it say what it costs?”

“Mum!”

“No exact figures on this page. It does say that partial or full scholarships are available, depending on circumstances.”

She nodded. “Alex, I’m not committing at this point, but I think we do need to talk to this school. Teenage mutants are vulnerable in ways that we might not be able to help you with. I took a course some years ago about how to help families whose children had been kidnapped. The statistics on how many of those children are never seen again are very bad.”

“And you think I’d be a target?”

She took a deep breath. “Setting aside the reasons any child might be targeted,” she said delicately. “And because you could be mistaken for a girl you are at slightly greater risk there, there’s also the prospect of people who’d want to hurt you just because you are a mutant and people who would want to use your powers for their own benefit. I don’t spend an enormous amount of time thinking about crimes, but for someone smuggling drugs, I imagine that you’d be very useful.”

“But I wouldn’t want to help them,” Alex protested.

“Alex.” His father lowered his voice. “What if they had Angus as well?”

He gulped, feeling tears prickle at his eyes. “That’s…”

“Yes.” Dad moved his chair and put one arm around Alex’s shoulder. “I don’t like it either, but we have to think about this. We don’t want anything like that to happen to any of you.”

“I wish this hadn’t happened.”

“It isn’t the best, no. Mind you, if you weren’t a mutant then you and Angus would have been run down by the Black Paladin, so it isn’t all bad,” his father pointed out. “As with anything in life, we’ll have to take the good with the bad.”

Alex slumped in his seat, biting back an ‘it’s not fair’. His parents weren’t claiming that it was fair… they were just saying that it was true. He wasn’t some little kid that didn’t know the difference.

“Chin up, Alex. We’re only saying we’re going to look into the school. There could be perfectly valid reasons for you not to go there.” His mother scrolled through the website. “They do offer GCSE and A-level exams for UK students, so that’s good. Oh.”

“Oh?”

She turned the tablet and displayed an image of the campus – at least Alex thought it was the campus. The buildings were buried up to the ground floor windows in snow. “It does get a little cold there apparently,” Mrs. McKenzie said with a grin. “It says that they do get snowed in most years but that they keep all necessary supplies on site so even if they’re cut off for weeks they’re just fine.”

“Weeks?” Alex heard his voice squeak a little.

“They have tunnels between the basements so students can keep going to class, apparently.”

Dad shook his head. “Alex. You of all people don’t have to worry about being snowed in.”

“Fair… but still. That’s a lot of snow.”

“Summers are a lot warmer, but you’d come home for those.”

“Can’t I stay here and go to class by teleporting?” Alex offered.

“I think customs might have some issues with that. And we don’t know exactly how long it would take for you to travel half-way around the world.”

“Fine…” Alex grumbled.

“And then there are time zones,” his mother added. “Six hours difference means the last classes don’t end until after ten o’clock at night here. Speaking of which, it should still be mid-afternoon there now. Shall we give them a call?”

“We might as well.” His father stood up. “I’ll get the landline. I don’t want an international call on what my mobile charges for them.”

“Sit down dear. There’s a much easier and cheaper way.” Mrs. McKenzie tapped the screen of a tablet. “They have a skype account,” she explained. There was a ping and she typed something quickly.

A moment later, a second ping signalled voice chat was active and a pleasant voice came from the tablet. “Good afternoon, this is Amerigo Vespucci Memorial. Palash Kirsaran speaking, how can I help you?”

Some unspoken conversation between his parents passed quickly and Mr. McKenzie took the tablet. “Hello, this is John McKenzie. I was given the details of your school by the EUIMA.”

“A pleasure to speak to you. Are you the prospective student?” Mr. Kirsaran asked. He had very British accent that wouldn’t have been out of place on the BBC news, rather than sounding like an American. Then again, his name didn’t sound as if he was an American. Whatever that meant.

“No, that would be my son, Alex. He’s here, as is my wife.”

“Hello Alex, Mrs McKenzie. Have you all looked at our web-page?” They all confirmed that they had. “That’s great. I’m sure you have many questions, but could I ask how old you are, Alex?”

“Fourteen.”

“Okay. And your birthday?”

“The twelfth of January.”

“Great. Is it alright if I ask the UK schools for your information?”

Alex glanced at his parents. “That’ll be fine, Mr. Kirsaran,” Mum said.

“Thank you. Where would you like to begin?”

“The, uh, security issue is what’s led us to think that Amerigo Vespucci might be a good idea for Alex,” his father began. “Could I ask what arrangements are in place to ensure that students are… kept safe?”

“I assume that you mean from outside factors, Mr. McKenzie?” The man paused a moment in case there was disagreement and not hearing any continued: “I’m sure you’ve realised the school is in quite an isolated location so anyone approaching without prior agreement is flagged automatically for our security. We maintain a twenty-four-hour security presence at the entrance to the school, the central offices and four roving personnel. As you might imagine, many of our staff including the security are mutants ourselves.”

He paused for breath. “If a student is considered at risk, we will usually ask that they wear a small tracking device on and off the campus. Freshman and sophomore students aren’t usually allowed off the campus without supervision by a teacher. There are some scheduled visits to Angle Inlet to the north or Warroad, across the lake, where the police are notified ahead of time to expect an influx of children and to be aware of any local concerns. Students considered at risk have a choice of passing up on those, or staying in groups including older and more able students who can keep them safe in an emergency – at least until adult help arrives. Do you have reason to believe that Alex is at risk?”

“We don’t have a specific reason but in general it seems his particular powers might make him a target.”

“Could I ask what his powers are, Mr. McKenzie?”

Dad passed the tablet to Alex. “I can step into another place, it might be another world, and step out anywhere I’ve been here. In this world I mean.”

Mr. Kirsaran didn’t say anything at first. “Yes,” he responded at last. “I can certainly see that some organisations would find that very interesting. Do you mind if we keep a written record of this? Our student files aren’t shared with anyone outside the school and the hospice, unless there’s a police request for information.”

“I think that we’d prefer that it wasn’t recorded unless Alex actually enrols,” Mr. McKenzie decided.

“I understand. Would you like to ask any more about our security?”

“Have there been any instances of students being attacked?” asked Alex’s mother.

“None of outside attacks,” Mr. Kirsaran replied carefully. “There have been three cases of quarrels between students reaching the point where students were expelled for violence against fellow students.”

“You have a strong anti-bullying policy.”

  
“Realistically, it is hard to entirely stamp out, particularly with such a diverse student body. We do what we can, through the dorm parents, the residential advisors and the counsellors – every student has a counsellor for academic purposes but also for anything else they may not wish to approach a teacher or dorm parent about, such as issues with a teacher or dorm parent. Violence is at least reasonably obvious and disciplinary action is mandatory under school rules.”

“On everyone involved or on whoever started the fight?” asked Alex.

“We teach our students to defend themselves, Alex. It would be hypocritical for us to then punish them for doing that. As long as they didn’t clearly provoke the other side into violence, or escalate the fight once it began; the normal process is to discipline whoever began the fight.”

Alex’s father held his hand out for the tablet. “I gather there are about two hundred students?”

“We usually start the year with a little over two hundred students and pick up a dozen or twenty through the school year. Given Alex’s age and where we are in the year, I’d imagine he’d be enrolling with our next Freshman class in September?”

“If we decide to send him, yes. Could I ask about the accommodations, the webpage shows shared rooms?”

“We have three dorms. Coronado is attached directly to the hospice for students who need specialist care and is co-ed with students having individual rooms so that we can tailor them to any specific needs they may have and fit in medical equipment if necessary. I hope that Alex doesn’t have that level of medical requirements, but if so, we can provide it.”

“Uh… no, I’m healthy.”

“I’m pleased to hear that. And…” Mr. Kirsaran paused. “It’s Alexander, isn’t it? Not Alexandra? I don’t wish to assume based on your voice over skype.”

“I’m a boy.”

“I thought so. Then we’d be offering a shared room in Ocampo Dorm. Students are allowed to select roommates of themselves or will be paired off if they don’t have a preference. Within reason we’re happy for rooms to be switched if pairings don’t work out. There are two dorm parents assigned to Ocampo, one of whom should always be on duty, and four responsible students, usually Juniors but occasionally a Senior who particularly enjoyed and did well in the role, act as Residential Advisors for the underclassmen. We know students would sometimes prefer not to involve adults if they don’t really have to.”

“I take it that there’s another dorm for the girls?”

“Yes.” The man sounded amused. “Kingsley dorm. Girls can visit the ground floor and basement of Ocampo, and vice versa, but the second floor… first floor in the UK, I believe? The above ground floors are off-limits to the other genders. We have a few spare rooms on the ground floor for emergencies but students’ rooms on the upper two floors by default. If they are on the ground floor, then their rooms are also off-limits to the other gender.”

“When do you run classes?” asked Alex’s mother.

“If you mean when does the next school year begin, we ask that freshmen arrive on the third day of September for orientation and so that we can make a start on any placement tests and sorting out their classes. The actual classes don’t begin until the ninth.”

“I was thinking more the daily schedule. I see that there are eight classes through the day, but I don’t see anything about breaks for meals.”

“Ah. Yes, that may need clarification on the website.” Mr. Kirsaran paused for a moment and Alex suspected he was making a note. “Students are usually scheduled for classes in seven out of the eight classes, with one of the two middle sessions set aside for lunch. There are occasional exceptions depending on class choices but usually the two younger years would eat in the fourth period and the older students eat after them.”

“That makes sense. Do you stagger breakfast and dinner in the same way?”

“No, but food is served for an hour and a half for those meals, rather than one hour for each group. Some students prefer to cook for themselves in the dorm kitchens, which is allowed as long as there are no health issues resulting.”

Mum nodded. “What about laundry?”

“Students are expected to handle their own. Dorm Parents are allowed to enforce standards if they feel it’s not being managed. If there’s something they can’t reasonably handle themselves, there’s a dry-cleaners in Warroad. The school will take care of delivering and collecting anything sent there but students have to pay up-front.” The man cleared his throat. “Students are allowed to help each other and I believe some of the better off students prefer to pay their classmates to do so. As long as it’s voluntary rather than bullying, the school has no objections to that sort of arrangement.”

“You’ll do your own, Alex.”

“Somehow I guessed,” he said drily. “Uh, about cooking…” He’d had some experience of school meals where there was nothing on offer he’d wanted to eat. “Where do the students get food to cook?”

“There’s a student store that provides most of what you’d find in a small supermarket. Older students make shopping trips to Warroad. There are stores in Winnipeg willing to deliver to the school’s storage facility outside the city, where it can be delivered to campus along with the school’s own supplies. We don’t charge for bringing it in, but if a student doesn’t collect it promptly from school stores it’s usually disposed of after a couple of days.”

“Alex can be something of a picky eater,” his mother said apologetically.

Kirsaran chuckled tolerantly. “We cater to a very diverse student body, so we offer a wide selection of food, but I understand it’s not for everyone. We do suggest that students have something they can prepare if they don’t want to eat what’s on offer or just don’t want to leave their dorm that day. Menus are made available at least a week ahead of time.”

“I take it that winter clothing is a must?”

“Yes,” he confirmed definitively. “It can be quite hot in summer, but through the autumn and spring terms, warm clothing is a requirement. There’s a recommended list on our website and items marked with an asterisk are considered required. If a student arrives without those items or they’re lost during term the school will provide them and bill the parents or guardians for the cost. Lighter clothes for the summer can be stored – there’s plenty of storage in each dorm – but winterweight clothes are a health requirement.”

“Speaking of billing…”

“There’s a formula based on the family’s means. We do charge more than most schools, but we also provide full health coverage and most students are subsidised by our donors either specifically or as part of general donations to AVM. Students on scholarship are expected to put in eight hours a week of work to support the school’s operations. Cleaning, serving food at breakfast or dinner, grounds maintenance and the like. If they take an interest, sometimes staff will put them forward for more skilled work – we’ve had students graduate with minor vocational qualifications as a result although it’s fairly rare. If you’d like I can email you the form we use for assessments and get back to you with a quote.”

“I saw a list of universities students have gone on to…”

“I can’t name names, for the most part. It’s part of the confidentiality agreement. There are two graduates who have agreed to represent our other alumni. I believe that they represent two extremes of the possible career paths open to AVM students.”

“Is that on the website?”

“Yes, if you open the tab on careers and then scroll down there’s hyperlink, ‘hearing from the alumni’ or something like that.”

“Oh, I found…”

Alex looked over at his dad, who was staring at the page. “Dad?”

“Am I reading this correctly? The Warlord of Beijing went to your school?”

“He enrolled directly as a junior during our first year. I believe he prefers to be called the Immortal Emperor these days.” Mr. Kirsaran paused for effect. “I’m not here to speak for or against his chosen career path. AVM is strictly neutral on that issue. However, he was extremely successful in his chosen lifepath, which in general is what we hope for. The second alumni is more conventionally admirable and spent four years here.”

Alex took the tablet and scrolled down. “Okay, I can see that.” The picture of the next former student was very recognisably the power-armoured Defender, latest in a series of high-profile American superheroes. Alex skimmed the blurb which was rather generic in his opinion. “Uh, what if someone just wants a normal job?”

“Then we’ll try to make sure you’re as well prepared for that job as we can, whether that involves your particular powers or not. You might find success as an international courier for example, but if you just want to focus academics and become, oh… an accountant for example, then we provide classes that fit with that career goal, up to advanced classes for juniors and seniors that count towards college credits here in the United States.”

“That is a little bit more reassuring,” his father said, still sounding a little unsettled. “I think that’s everything that comes to mind at the moment.”

“What’s your policy on visiting home and phone calls?” asked his mother.

“To start with the last point, most students have cellphones these days. Unless a teacher specifically allows it, they are not to be used in class. Otherwise all we ask is that students be considerate of those around them. Chattering away into the late evening when a roommate is trying to sleep causes more incidents than you might think.”

“Do you allow them to be used at night?”

“There’s no reasonable way to stop them short of confiscation. With that said, dorm parents do have the authority to confiscate phones and to examine anything on the phones if they see fit. Computers are allowed under the same reasoning and each dorm has a computer room with workstations available first come first served for those who don’t have them. We don’t allow games on those computers though.”

“And home visits? I’m sure you see why. Alex could come home every night in theory.”

“The time zones wouldn’t make that a very good idea,” Mr. Kirsaran observed. “Families are free to collect their children at any time they want, although we ask for forty-eight hours’ notice if any classes will be missed – emergencies excepted, of course. We do have some three-day weekends due to US public holidays and we’re prepared to deliver students to Winnipeg airport for those holidays as well as for the breaks in semester and, where possible, we’ll accommodate reasonable requests at other times. Given the legal issues in crossing national or even state boundaries with minors, we’d otherwise ask that Alex not simply return home whenever he wants. Supervised return may be arranged as part of helping him to understand his powers, but simply doing so on a whim would be problematic for the school and might lead to some resentment from other students.”

Alex made a face. Still, maybe he could sneak home if he was careful about it. Something to think about.

“We’ll have to give this some thought,” his mother said. “Is there a good time call if we have more questions?”

“We have a question and answer session at twelve noon next Saturday for parents considering the school for next year. Six in the evening your time. Would you like me to invite you?”

Both of them agreed and the call ended.

“We’ll hold off on any decision until we’ve looked at the costs and listened to that session,” his father decided.

Alex nodded but he suspected that they’d made the decision. They just didn’t want to admit it… and he was going to wind up in the United States for the bulk of the next four years.

* * *

“I’m amazed that this is in such good condition,” Mr. McKenzie said as he finished cutting away the mass of ivy that had grown up across the door to the castle in the other world.

Cautious exploration had found a stone bridge that linked the shoreline to one of the islands off the coast and overlooking the southern end of the bridge was a stone keep, overgrown but the walls still tall and the door that filled the entrance was apparently solid.

“It must have taken decades for the ivy to have gotten this thick,” he continued. “I’d have expected the mortar to have worn away and how a wooden door has survived…”

Alex gathered up the ivy with gloved hands and drags it aside and out of the way. “Do you think we can open the door?” he asked.

“I hope so.” His father put the garden clippers down carefully and then pushed lightly on the wooden door that had been uncovered. It shifted slightly, caught on something behind it and then scraped backwards, pushing whatever had caught upon it.

Alex took the spade he’d used to shovel away the debris and poked it through the gap in the door, then twisted it around and tried to scrape away whatever was blocking it. There was definitely something down there, but what it was, he couldn’t tell. It was too heavy for him to move with just the spade at this angle.

“Do you have it?”

“No.”

His father stopped pushing. “Try and get a look with the torch.”

Extracting the spade, Alex went back to the bag of tools that they’d carried with them, keeping an eye out. So far there had been no further sighting of the boar but there were certainly smaller animals around so it might be back. As such, they were sticking together, and the bag was only a few steps away.

Returning with the torch he squinted through the gap. “Some kind of beam, I think. I don’t think it’s from the ceiling, that seems to be stone. It’s end-on to the door and… right, the other end is scraping along the wall when you push.”

“Do you think you can push it aside?” his father asked.

“I’d need to hook it somehow, but maybe. Not with the spade, and I don’t have much leverage to work with if I can only get my wrist through.”

“Give it a try. I’m afraid I may damage the door if I push it harder.”

Alex looked at the garden tools available and picked up the clippers. “Maybe with these. Can you hold the door steady? I don’t want to have it swing shut on me.”

Dad took hold of the door’s rusty handle, little more than a loop through a bracket. “I have it.”

Working the clippers through the hole, Alex put the blades behind the beam and tried to lever it towards him and out of the way of the door. Despite all his prodding it wouldn’t shift though. “No…”

If I could just choose where I come into this world I could probably choose to arrive behind the door, he thought, sitting back on his haunches.

“Shall I try?”

“Feel free.” He stepped back to let his father have a go, although he doubted it would work. He was probably stronger than his father, for what it was worth, so he didn’t have high hopes, but perhaps the older man would see a solution that he didn’t.

“Alex, please hold the door.”

“Oh, sure.” He stood and complied as his father put his hand through the door.

“That’s disappointing,” the balding man said after a moment. “I can’t get it to move either. We might have to break the door to get through. It’s a shame after it’s lasted this long. Or shall we leave it and see if we can come back with some more tools later?

“I suppose it’s not…” Alex broke off. “Dad, take your arm out for a moment.”

“Hmm?” He complied.

Alex gave the door a little shake. “I have an idea.” He pushed the door as far as he could, scraping it perhaps another quarter-inch wider and then yanked the handle upwards as hard as he could.

Scraping against the inside of the doorframe, the door lifted off its hinge-pins and fell inwards, pulling a surprised Alex with it.

“Alex!”

“I’m okay,” the boy groaned from where he was lying on the fallen door. “Ouch.”

His father extended his hand and helped him up. “Well, that did work. Well done.” With his other hand he flashed the torch around the entrance hall of the keep. “Remarkable. It’s almost entirely intact. It seems you have a castle here.”

“And if we put the door back, it’s somewhere that’s secure against the wildlife,” Alex agreed. “Which makes me feel a lot safer about coming here alone.”

“Indeed. Let’s get this door sorted out.”

Working together they lifted the door and propped it against the inside wall, revealing that it had braces on the back, intended to hold the bar that had caused their problems. The bar hadn’t been in place or Alex doubted they could have opened the door without breaking it down entirely.

“Fetch the bag,” his father instructed. “We can hang the door again, bar it and then maybe we’d better call it a day.”

Alex rubbed his chest, where he could feel bruises forming from his fall. “Sounds good to me.”

* * *

Crossing the Atlantic in a matter of hours was objectively amazing. Alex knew enough history to realise that. But it was deeply boring as well, probably made worse by the idea that he could probably travel this far in minutes if he just had a reference point to use as a destination.

Still, at least there was a decent chance he might never need to fly transatlantic again. He’d tried to sleep, failed, and wound up reading three books on his kindle before the plane began to descend towards JFK airport.

He’d thought that boarding was a pain at Manchester, but even after filing off the passenger jet that had brought him here, there was a long queue for going through customs.

At least I don’t have to pick up anything but carry-on luggage, he thought. He’d thought two hours before he had to board the next plane would leave him sitting around for at least an hour, but now he was beginning to wonder if he’d make it to the other plane in time or not.

He heard someone clear their throat behind him and half-turned to see the woman behind him giving him a curious look. It was hard to guess her age, he thought he saw white roots for her bleached hair. Not young, maybe his mother’s age. “Excuse me. I don’t see your family.”

Alex mentally upped her age by ten years. “Uhhh. No, nor do I.”

“You really shouldn’t try to go through customs before they catch up.”

“I’m where I’m supposed to be, thank you.” He turned back to shuffle forwards as the queue moved towards the counter.

The woman didn’t give up though. “You can’t hold places for people, you know.”

Not looking back, he sighed. “Yes, I know.”

“There’s no need to be snippy, young lady. If you’ve been separated you can speak to the security men.”

“No. I’m fine, thank you.” Was she trying to justify pushing past him?

“Oh, please don’t make a scene.”

I’m not, he thought. But you…

“Excuse me,” the woman called after Alex declined to respond. “Security, this young lady has been separated from her family.”

Oh, she didn’t.

She had though and a woman in uniform made her way across two queues to reach them, apologising to those she was moving past. Alex sighed and reached into his jacket pocket, making sure he had his passport and the letter from AVM with him. He’d been advised to do so, in case he needed to explain his presence. If this made him miss the flight.

“Alright, what’s going on here?”

“This -”

“I’m being harassed,” Alex interrupted the woman behind him. “I think she’s trying to get me out of the queue for some reason.”

“That is not true!” the woman protested. “I just noticed that this young lady is on her own and she’s surely too young for that.”

The security woman nodded patiently. She must get this sort of thing fairly regularly, Alex guessed. “Thank you. Could I see your passports please?”

Alex handed hers over and had to wait for the lady to get hers from her bag. The people behind them were beginning to grumble. His passport was returned before the other lady could provide hers.

“Hmm.” The security woman – her badge said Griffiths – glanced at the queue and gestured for Alex to move along as the queue did, side-stepping to stay with him. She returned the lady’s passport. “Are you travelling alone, Mr. McKenzie?”

“Yes.”

“To school?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you have anything from the school?”

Alex provided the letter. “I’m supposed to catch a flight to Winnipeg in…” he checked his watch. “Just over an hour, now.”

Griffiths nodded. “Plenty of time. If it’s the Air Canada flight… yes? Right, then it’s leaving from this terminal, so you don’t have far to go.” She scanned the letter and then reached down to her radio. “Desk, we have a Fourteen-C. Could you call the number I’m going to give you and check that they’re expecting an Alexander McKenzie by the Air Canada flight to Winnipeg in an hour.” She read off the number from the letter and returned it.

“Thanks.”

“Not at all.” She turned to the lady. “Thank you, that’ll be fine, Mrs. Murdoch.”

“Wait, this is a boy?” the woman exclaimed.

“We ask all passengers travelling through JFK to respect their fellow passengers,” Griffiths hinted. “I’m glad to have been able to help.”

Her radio chirped and she reached up to the discreet earpiece. “Ah, that’s good. Thank you.” Glancing along the line and then back at Mrs. Murdoch, Griffiths took Alex’s elbow. “Come with me please.”

“Is something wrong?”

She shook her head and gestured towards the front. “No, everything checks out.”

Alex considered resisting but decided against it. He was pretty sure fighting security would be a terrible idea and if he stepped into the other world, he’d have to either return to this gate of the terminal, the airliner or back in the UK. Not a great idea barring emergency.

Griffiths escorted him up to the head of the queue. “Could we just step through here please?” she asked the family about to approach the counter. They blinked a little irritably but let Alex put his bag on the scanner along with his wallet and phone.

Alex handed his passport and the letter over to the man behind the counter who checked both quickly. “Have you checked this?” he asked Griffiths.

“Yes. The letter’s valid and his next flight’s in an hour.”

The man nodded, stamped the passport and handed it back along with the letter. “Welcome to the US, Mr. McKenzie,” he said in what was obviously a well-practised routine. “Please go through the arch for your bag.”

Nothing seemed to happen as Alex went through the arch and his bag and wallet were waiting behind the barrier. “Thanks,” he said to Griffiths.

“Not a problem. It’s sometimes just easier to separate people,” she told him. “And if you’re anything like my nephews, I’m guessing you’ll want to grab something to eat before your flight.”

Alex paused. He’d had breakfast on the plane, but it hadn’t been all that much… “That sounds good. Thank you,” he added again.

Griffiths didn’t leave him though, walking with him to the food court. There didn’t seem to be time for a sit-down meal so Alex beelined to the McDonalds and paid for his food with his debit card rather than mess around with the American currency he’d exchanged for back in the UK.

The security woman gave the bag he’d paid for an amused look but said nothing and pointed out the gate he wanted before walking him there as well. Alex was sure she meant well, but the security escort made him feel like he was the focus of attention for everyone there.

Much to his relief, Griffiths left him at the counter, and he was able to book in for the flight without any further incident.

“Is that your only bag?” the attendant asked, looking at his rucksack.

“Most of my stuff got shipped off ahead,” he explained. That was actually how AVM preferred students to travel if they were arriving by public transport, it let any missing bags or the like be found before anyone actually needed the contents, but Alex had just left his bags in the other world. The castle was dry and secure, so he could just go in there and remove them once he got to the school.

“Okay.” She pointed out the toilet. “If you want you can leave your bag here and I’ll keep an eye on it while you’re in there,” she offered. “I’d suggest going before you fly and not at the last minute.”

“Thanks. I’ll go once I’ve eaten.”

Sitting with his back to the windows, Alex tore through the McMuffins he’d ordered and washed them down with a bottle of orange juice. Seeing he still had more than half an hour, he took his bag into the washroom and brushed his teeth before using the other facilities. Mum had been right about how his mouth felt after flying.

When he got back, the seats were filling up. Pulling his kindle out, he started another book. He only managed a couple of chapters though before the first call was made for boarding.

* * *

Alex had a window seat on the new plane. He’d barely finished putting his bag up in the overhead cabinet, when a tall young man moved up. “Excuse me, this is my seat.”

“Aisle seat?” Alex asked.

“That’s right.”

“Then I’m in the window seat.” He peeled off his jacket and moved to the seat, picking up the kindle he’d taken out earlier before sitting down.

The other boy put his own bag up before sitting down, still wearing his own coat. “You’re travelling alone?”

“Yes.” Please don’t make a scene.

“So am I.” He offered Alex his hand. “Larry Meadows.”

Alex accepted and shook. “Alex McKenzie.”

“Pleased to meet you. Are you Canadian?”

“No. I’m British.”

“Ah, are you…” the boy frowned in concentration. “You’re going to a boarding school near Winnipeg.”

“That’s a good guess.”

Larry smiled broadly. “I’m just getting started, Alex. Let me see… it’s not a Canadian school, it’s across the border?”

“Right again.” Alex nodded. “Let me guess now… you’re going to Amerigo Vespucci as well?”

“Got it in one,” the other boy agreed. “What gave me away?”

“How many boarding schools can there be around Winnipeg?”

“Ah, deductive reasoning. Very good.” Larry glanced around to make sure no one could hear them. “So do you know the secret mutant handshake?”

“No…?”

“No one else does either. I’m very disappointed.”

Alex chuckled at that.

“Don’t be offended or anything, but I’m going to have to ask. Boy or girl?”

“Boy.”

“Thanks. I didn’t want to assume,” Larry explained. “Because it would make an ass of me.”

Alex had to admit that it was better to just be asked than for people to make assumptions. “It’s fine. Happens all the time.”

“Then there’s no reason for me to make the same mistake. So -”

Larry was cut off by a stewardess making sure they’d both buckled in for take-off. “Please put your tablet away until the warning light goes out,” she asked Alex, who tucked the kindle into the little restraining net on the back of the other seat.

After she was gone, Larry glanced around. “So did your parents drop you off?”

“In Manchester.”

“That’s… on the west coast? Near Wales?”

“Yes.”

The other boy nodded. “I’ve been to London. Did you fly through Heathrow?”

“No, direct from Manchester to New York.”

“It’s a long flight, isn’t it?”

“You’re American?”

He got a nod. “I’m from New York – the state, not the city. I came down from Albany yesterday and spent the night in a hotel.”

“On your own?”

“No. I’m sure I’d have been fine, but my mother insisted on seeing me off. I’m just glad she didn’t make a scene at the terminal.”

“It’s nice she cares,” Alex pointed out.

“I’m fourteen now. That’s old enough for taking the train at least. And it’s only an international flight by technicality.”

“So, you’re a first year… uh, a Freshman?” Alex found the American habit of naming years in the school a bit odd.

“Yes. The same for you?”

Alex nodded. “Feels a bit strange not to be going back to same school I was last year.”

“Oh? Your school goes right through from Junior High?”

“Most do, in the UK.”

“Like in Harry Potter? Seven years.”

“Well, yeah, although it’s two years of Sixth year… or Year Twelve, depending on the school.”

Larry gave him a suspicious look. “Why two years of Sixth year?”

“I think it’s a hold-over from way back,” Alex answered. “Sixth Form was sort of a preparation year for University entrance exams, but then it got fleshed out to two years after A-levels were brought in… or at least, that’s how I understand it. And at my school, you started in Year Seven at eleven, the previous six years are for primary school.”

“Elementary?”

“I guess.”

“That’s a weird system. A-levels are basically NEWTs, right.”

“I can’t help but think there’s something odd about using Harry Potter as a reference for my school system, but yeah,” Alex confirmed. “Everyone takes GCSEs at the end of Year Eleven – I think that that’s Sophomores for you?”

“Not this school year, next one? Yes, Sophomore year.”

“And then A-levels over the next two years. Which are technically optional but almost everyone does them either at their school or at a college. That’s how it works at my school.”

“Your old school,” Larry pointed out. “Now you get to enjoy the wonders of an American High School.”

“Judging from what I’ve seen on TV, I’m not sure I should be excited or terrified.”

“Well it’s not just any school. It’s a school where we can…” Larry lowered his voice. “Learn how to use our powers.”

Alex checked to see if anyone was listening to them. “What do you… do?”

“Veeeery mild precog,” the other boy told him. “It’s how I guessed we were going to AVM.” For a moment, Alex thought he was done and then Larry added matter-of-factly. “Also, I can fly.”

“Wow. That’s neat. Why both though?”

“It’s all a matter of a psi talent apparently. At least, that’s what they said when my powers were tested. It’s not like I triggered twice or something.”

Alex opened his mouth to ask how Larry had triggered; but thought better of it. They were getting a bit loud. “So, what are you looking forwards to at AVM?”

“Cheerleading.”

“…you want to be a cheerleader?”

“No!” Larry nudged him with his elbow. “I want to see high school cheerleaders.”

“Is that even a thing?”

“Don’t you have them in the UK?”

Alex rolled his eyes. “Well, not at my school. But would AVM even have cheerleaders? We can’t compete with other schools at sports so why would there be cheerleaders?” Mutants were excluded from sports as it was considered an unfair advantage.

Larry’s face fell. “I hadn’t thought of that. There’s still sports at the school though. Physical Education is mandatory, from what they told us.”

“I think so.” Which didn’t sound great to Alex, who had never been very keen on sports. The locker room hadn’t been a ton of fun for the last month of the previous school year either.

“So that means there’ll be a hundred or so girls in sportswear every day.”

“Every day?”

“Yes.”

Alex frowned. Once a week was his own experience. Just how sports-crazy were American schools?

“There are good language classes too,” Larry added, more seriously. “Being multi-lingual is a huge leg-up in life, so I want to take two foreign languages.”

“Which ones?” Alex had done the mandatory French and German up until now, although he’d planned to drop one for his GCSEs and focus on humanities.

“I’ve been taking Spanish so far and I want to add Cantonese. The Chinese are a big market.”

“I thought the Chinese language was Mandarin?”

“There’s more than one language in China, Cantonese and Mandarin are the big ones. Southern China, like Hong Kong, speaks Cantonese so if you want business dealings there then it helps to speak it.”

“You’re not planning on being a superhero then?”

Larry shrugged. “Who knows? You can’t do that sort of thing forever, it’s a young man’s life. Most superheroes wind up handing their masks on and doing something else later. You have to think ahead.”

He sounds like he’s got it all planned out, Alex thought admiringly.


	4. This Could Be Hobbit-Forming

No one hassled them as they disembarked from the plane and on the far side of customs, a stocky man with horn-rimmed spectacles was holding up a sign declaring:

GRAINGER, S

MCKENZIE, A

MEADOWS, L

Two boys were standing behind the man, looking towards them. Alex and Larry approached him and another girl their age joined them a moment later.

“Sarah, Alex and Larry?” he asked. “Could I see your passports please?”

“Sure.” The girl still had hers in her hand and handed hers over first, followed by the boys.

The man checked them and then handed them back. “I’m Dr. Wilder,” he introduced himself and pulled out a Photo ID with the school badge lightly watermarked – if that was the word for something made of plastic – and his name and some other details. Alex noticed that his first name was Jason and there was an III after his surname. “Do any of you have checked in bags?”

“Just one,” Sarah said apologetically.

“Girls!” one of the boys already present whispered.

The other boy punched his arm.

“Cut it out, you two,” Dr. Wilder said briskly. “We’re waiting on another flight for some more students to fill out this bus-load so we can take a moment to get your bag, Sarah.” He waved them towards the carousel, folding the sign up and stowing it in his satchel.

“I’m Steve,” the first of the two boys said, offering his hand to Larry.

“And he’s a jackass,” added the other boy. “Sorry, girls. He’s a Neanderthal at the best of times.”

“Shove it, Rob.”

“You -”

“If the two of you can’t be civilised in public, I’m more than happy to have you cleaning the school drains as soon as we get there,” Dr Wilder said without raising his voice. There was a distinct snap to the words though. “If you want to meet your fellow freshmen smelling of excrement, it can be arranged.”

Both boys shut up and Sarah grinned. “So,” she said to Alex. “I didn’t see you on the plane.”

“I missed you too,” Alex agreed. “Larry and I were seated next to each other.”

The girl eyed him. “And did he notice the Adam’s apple?”

“No, but he had the sense to ask.”

“Uh… that means you’re a guy?” Steve asked.

Alex nodded.

“Oops.” The boy shrugged. “Sorry.”

“No big.”

Steve offered his hand. “So, Rob and I both go back years. Same schools all the way up to now. And then we trigger at the same time and both wound up here as well. What are the odds?”

“Pretty long.” At least they knew someone already at the school. Then again, since they didn’t seem to get on. “It’s not exactly a huge school.”

“We try to make it on quality,” Dr. Wilder advised as they reached the luggage area. “Sarah, what are you looking out for?”

“A black case, about yay long,” she said, holding her hands out. “It’s got a tag with my name on it on the handle.”

“Alright boys, could you keep an eye out?”

“Why didn’t you ship it?” asked Rob. “That’s what we did, except for this.” He indicated his own rucksack.

“And Alex’s bags,” Dr. Wilder noted, checking his phone. “You’ve made other arrangements?”

“All my stuff is secure and I’ll have it when we’re at school.”

“You’re not planning to go back to the UK for it, I hope?”

The other teenagers looked over at Alex. “Back to the UK.”

“I, uh, teleport.”

“Across the Atlantic!?” Sarah said and then flushed as she realised how loudly she’d said it. “And I would have shipped it,” she added to Rob, “But it was late getting to me and by the time I had it, we’d shipped everything else to school.”

“I can teleport as well,” Steve noted in a low voice. “But I’m just line of sight.”

“I’ve never actually tried going that far,” Alex said. “But in theory, everything should be fine for me to collect.” He visualised the other world for a moment but let it go rather than trying to enter it. The image of the inside of the castle was just as solid as it had been back home, which was a relief. If he couldn’t get in there, then he’d be short a lot of clothes and other items he’d brought with him.

“The difference between theory and practise is that in theory, there is no difference,” Dr. Wilder noted.

“Do you want me to try to fetch everything now?”

“Uh, no, I think the mini-bus will be a bit crowded.” The doctor turned to Sarah and pointed at the next carousel over. “Is that your case?”

“It looks like it.” She darted over and returned a moment later, carrying it. “Yes, this is it.”

“Not too large, I think we’ll manage then.” The doctor checked his watch. “And a good twenty minutes before our next flight arrives. Do feel free to use the toilets and we can visit the food court if you want – although please avoid sodas. It’s a long drive to the school and there aren’t all that many places to stop for toilet breaks.”

After a quick dispersal to use the facilities, they returned to the terminal, Alex still chewing on the last of his burger. “Where do you put it all?” Sarah asked enviously.

“Teleporting probably uses a lot of energy,” Steve theorised.

“Very possible. Most mutants do have high metabolisms to support their powers and the changes to their bodies,” Dr. Wilder confirmed. He withdrew a new sign from his satchel and held it up.

It seemed like an interminable wait to Alex, who didn’t want to risk taking out his kindle while he was just standing around, before four more teenagers made their way through customs to join the group. Three girls and one boy, with two of the girls clearly of Asian heritage (one with a striking head of bleached blonde hair) and the other two freshman were black.

“Nina, Kimberley, Thomas and Mary?” asked Dr. Wilder, following the same identification routine he’d used the last time. “Alright,” he continued once everyone was clear that these were in fact the students that he was expecting. “Any checked-in bags? No? Very good, so if our new arrivals could use the facilities, we’ll head for the van and hopefully make it to AVM in time for a late lunch.”

*

“Hi, I’m Nina,” the black girl offered to Alex as they got on the bus. “Want to sit in the back?”

“Eh, we can I guess?” he answered. “I’m Alex.”

“Pleased to meet ya.” She turned. “Hey, Thomas, catch the back?”

“Okay.” The black boy joined them. He was easily the largest of the students – maybe six feet, Alex estimated - but neither Nina nor Alex were all that large so they fit together at the back while the other students found their own places.

Rob called shotgun but Dr. Wilder had Sarah take the other front seat, cramming her case in between them, so the boy settled for sitting next to Larry.

That left Steve in the middle row of the van between the two Asian girls, who by a process of deduction had to be Mary and Kimberley. Not exactly Asian names, so probably they were born and raised American.

“So where are you from?” Thomas asked. “LA for me and little Nina over there is from… Oakland, right?”

“Enough with the ‘little’,” she said with a little asperity.

“Hey, everyone looks little from my height,” he told her.

“I’m British,” Alex told them. “From the Lancashire Pennines. I doubt you’ve ever heard of the town.”

“You might adjust better to the school than us city-folks then,” Thomas offered cheerfully. “I think this is my first time seeing a… you call them, ‘trees’?” he added with alleged uncertainty.

“Oh, is your family from the West Indies?” asked Nina.

Alex blinked. “Well, Dad was born there…” Although how she’d guessed that… was she another pre-cog or… oh. “But ethnically speaking, uh, no. My grandparents were just over there to work.”

Nina nodded. “We covered the triangle trade last year in school,” she said as if that explained everything. “So, what’s it like being black in the UK?”

“Very confusing.”

“How so?”

“I was white up until June this year.”

“…what?”

Thomas laughed, a big booming sound that made Alex jump. “You’re an actual Oreo?”

“…what’s an Oreo?”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Nina held up her hand. “You were white?”

Alex sighed. “Something like three quarters of my family tree is rooted in places Scandinavians colonised, back in the day. I was born blue-eyed and blond. Then I triggered and two days later I looked like this.”

“…you’re putting me on.”

Thomas laughed again. “Hey, I believe it. Welcome to the master race, Alex.”

“Isn’t that a bit racist?”

“You’re black now, it’s allowed. Black humour, you might say.”

Nina shook her head. “It’s still racist and wrong. God. What is wrong with you two?”

“This is going to be a long drive, isn’t it?” Alex said with a long-suffering sigh. “So what’s an Oreo?”

* * *

Although it was a fairly clear day and the sun was high in the sky, trees arched over the road as it cut through Northwest Angle.

“The school is named for an early explorer,” Dr Wilder explained to those of the students paying attention, “And it’s in an area defined by errors made by early explorers. The 1783 treaty that established the borders between the United States and what would eventually become Canada assumed that the source of the Mississippi was north-west of the lake and defined the border as crossing the Lake of the Woods to its north-western point and then directly westwards until it reached the river. But the there’s no point where that line will actually intersect the Mississippi River.”

“In 1818 it was decided that the actual border would go south from the north-western corner of the lake to the 49th parallel. But it was another seven years before the north-western point was decided and the line cut off this section of US territory from the rest of the continental United States. It wasn’t exactly a huge priority, since Minnesota wasn’t even a territory at the time and only became a state in 1858.”

The border crossing had been anti-climactic, Alex recalled. Dr. Wilder had simply pulled over at booth by the side of the road and used a phone inside to inform U.S. Customs that he was bringing the students into the United States. The call had taken less than a minute.

“Technically speaking, this is also an Indian Reservation,” the lecture continued. “Most of the land belongs to the Red Lake Indian Reservation. There’s only a single Native American in the Angle that I’m aware of though so it’s hardly a major issue.”

A pair of pillars – with open gates between them and no wall to indicate an actual perimeter – marked the edge of the campus and Dr. Wilder slowed the mini-bus. “Alright, everyone. Wake up any of your colleagues who’ve dozed off, please, and welcome to Amerigo Vespucci Memorial High School.”

Alex’s first impression of the school was of golden sandstone among the trees. The main road cut down between two large buildings, each slightly elevated above it and separated by a sidewalk and a line of evergreen trees. Dr. Wilder turned left onto a smaller road and gestured to the right, where an open section of grass was surrounded on all sides by buildings of a similar size and architecture. “This is the quad. It’s used for student events in decent weather, we get some sunbathers in summer, but I wouldn’t recommend it at the moment, much less as it gets colder. On our left is Brule Hall, one of the teaching blocks and…” He turned right, following the edge of the quad. “…the Sports Hall, which our sponsors haven’t agreed to a name for. You’ll all be taking Phys Ed there, after lunch every day.”

The minivan left the Quad behind, following the road further east. A building much like Brule Hall reared up to the right, with smaller houses to the left.

“Galeano Hall, more classrooms,” Wilder told them. “And some of the staff housing. I strongly advise against trespassing, staff who live in the cottages are not on call for student emergencies, that’s what dorm parents are for.”

Alex could see the lake up ahead as the road sloped down towards it, but after passing the houses the mini-van pulled up in front of an H-shaped building three storeys tall, if you included the attic with its dormer windows. “And this is Ocampo Dorm, for the gentlemen among you,” Dr. Wilder declared. “Also for any boys who don’t consider themselves gentlemen. Out, please, boys. I’ll be driving the girls over to Kingsley next and you’re not allowed to join them.”

It took a few moments to get the boys, mostly stiff after the long ride, out and they looked up at the place they’d be calling home for the next four years.

There were two main wings, matching what Alex expected from what he’d been told in the welcome pack, stretching north and south. Between them an east-west wing connected them, and the main entrance was squarely in the centre of it.

The door opened as Alex watched and three men emerged, one older man wearing military-style fatigue pants and a T-shirt, and two young men that were probably students. One was barefoot, feet looking too large when compared to his short blocky frame (Alex guessed that they must be eighteen inches long and proportionately wide) and another who looked entirely normal until he got closer and a startling resemblance to Dr. Wilder became apparent.

“Good afternoon, lads.” The man offered his hand to each of them in turn. Alex found his grip just a touch firmer than was really comfortable. “I’m Mr. Ross, one of the dorm parents here. That doesn’t make me your friend. If I think you’re not doing something you should be, I will kick your asses until it gets done. But at the same time if there’s something you actually need done that you can’t reasonably be expected to take care of, I’m here to sort it out. Don’t give me any crap and we’ll get on.”

Alex blinked, unsure what to make of that.

The boy with large feet made a noise that sounded like a hastily cut-off laugh. “I’m Doug Ashmore, a Junior this year and one of the Residential Advisors. Most of you will probably be rooming in the block of rooms I’m responsible for. If you’re not sure if you’re about to draw Mr. Ross or Mr. Revere’s wrath… or you don’t know if you should take something to them, you can ask my advice. I’m also here to answer basic questions. Most people call me Hobbit, for obvious reasons. Obviously, I have my own schoolwork to do, but I know there’s a lot to get used to and I’m a lot more approachable.”

Doug didn’t offer his hand to them, but he seemed a lot friendlier than Mr. Ross. “This is Jason,” he added. “He’s going to be helping me out today, but he’s not an RA, just a Freshman like you.”

“Why are you doing that?” asked Rob, rather bluntly.

“I was drafted,” Jason said drily. “You’ve met my Pop already, Dr. Wilder, and since I’m here anyway he volunteered me.”

“Put your bags inside,” Mr Ross ordered. “There’s some food – unless you’re entirely unlike any other bunch of freshmen, I assume you’re hungry, and then we can give you a tour.”

Through the doors, Alex found that most of the wing was open plan on the ground floor, with more doors leading back into a courtyard surrounded by the northern ends of the two wings. Fireplaces occupied the corners and folding tables had been set up, one stacked with sandwiches, sausage rolls, pies and other finger food.

“Just drop your bags on that table,” Ross instructed. “There are toilets to the right and left, if you need them.”

Alex took the opportunity and came back to see Thomas holding two paper plates stacked with food. “Here,” the large black boy offered. “I wasn’t sure what you’d want and I wasn’t sure there’d be anything left by the time you got back.”

“Thanks.” Alex accepted the plate. There didn’t seem to be anything objectionable on it. “What do you think of this place at first glance?”

Thomas considered that for a moment and then shrugged. “Helluva difference from my last school.”

“I’d imagine so,” Doug agreed, seeming to appear from nowhere, a sandwich in one hand. “We’re a long way from L.A. or Manchester… that’s your nearest city, isn’t it, Alex?”

“Nearest… major city, shall we say?”

“Okay, fair enough. I don’t know England, but I hope to go there some day. Tolkien country, you know?”

“Wasn’t he from New Zealand?” asked Thomas curiously.

“No, that’s just where the films were made,” said Doug seriously. “Anyway, this is a pretty good place for just hanging out during the school year. The fires keep it warm – which is a major deal through the next six months or so – and girls are allowed to visit on this floor.

“Does that happen very often?” Alex wasn’t sure what he wanted the answer to be.

Doug nodded. “There are a fair number of couples on campus. There may not be any real privacy here, but if you just want to sit on a couch or something – oh,” he broke off as Alex looked around in surprise, “We moved the couches out of the way for today, usually there are six. Anyway, there are a couple of TVs as well. Nice way to spend an afternoon.”

“Maybe we’ll find out for ourselves, eh Alex?” suggested Thomas loudly and nudged Alex. “Nina seemed pretty keen on you earlier.”

“On educating me, you mean.”

“Well. This is a school, after all!”

“So, what’s on this floor?” Alex asked, to change the subject.

“I’m glad you asked!” Doug pointed to the end of the wing. “The two sides are pretty much the same, just flipped one-eighty degrees. North-east and south-west corners are the house parents’ wings. They have apartments at the end and there are four spare student rooms – none used at the moment, but there’s a full bathroom for each wing so if the main washrooms here are all in use you can use those. Don’t expect those rooms to be in use unless we fill up every other room or someone’s moved down there for extra supervision – and they are locked, so don’t think you can sneak a girl in there to study biology, nudge-nudge, wink-wink.”

Thomas nodded. “Which one is Mr. Ross?”

Dough indicated the south-west corner of the dorm. “He faces the rest of the school, Mr. Revere faces away, he likes the sea-view. Between you and me, if you have trouble then ask Mr. Ross. Revere’s the one who’s big on being the disciplinarian.”

Alex arched his eyebrow, the burly Mr. Ross seemed tough enough as it was. More Drill Instructor than Dorm Parent. “And the other two corners?”

“That may take more of a tour,” Doug said and raised his voice. “Okay, gather round froshes, I’m going to give you a quick look at the facilities down here. Are we missing anyone… one-two-three… six froshes, great.”

The junior quickly recapped what he’d said about the dorm parent’s wings. “The other sides of each wing mirror each other the same way, so what I say here applies to north-west wing as well. These rooms are all open for everyone to use.”

“Opening off the great room here, we have the computer lab. If anyone needs an email or to use a word processor, and you don’t want to use your own computer, this is fine. Honestly, I don’t recommend these if you do have your own laptop or something similar, they’re old and god only knows what sort of crap’s piled up on them over the last ten years. But needs must and they have printers if you need them – bear in mind that most teachers prefer homework to be emailed to them, not handed in on paper, so you probably won’t need to print much. Bring your own paper if you need it.”

Doug pointed to the right as they went down the corridor. “Laundry. If you don’t know how to use it, ask. There are quite enough students who have overly sensitive noses and will be annoyed if you don’t keep relatively clean. And the girls don’t like it if you stink, take it from me. That doesn’t just affect you, it affects any girls the rest of us bring over so, if you forget expect to be reminded. Possibly by being given a snow bath.”

Alex sighed. Laundry was boring.

“And on the left,” Doug pointed to a small side-passage. “Four study rooms. There’s a desk and two chairs, good for if you have a shared project. If you’re working with a girl you can go there with her and close the door. But don’t be too surprised if Revere spot-checks to make sure you’re actually studying. Use is a privilege, not a right. Around the end of the semester there will be a booking form, because they can be in hot demand.”

“What’s next?” asked Steve, pointing at a door on the far side of the corridor.

“Ah, now this is the game room. Video games mostly, but if you want to break out a board game there’s a cupboard of them.” Doug opened the door and showed them a long room with several large screens on the walls, each faced by a couch. Two tables with chairs occupied one end of the room and there were cabinets along one wall. “Everything here was donated and is shared property of the dorm. None of it leaves the room – if anything goes missing then there will be a search and anyone who walked off with it will be up shit-creek.”

“Snow bath again?”

Doug paused and looked at Larry. “There are going to be something like a hundred students in this building. It doesn’t take very much effort by that many people to make life very difficult for one person who pisses them off. Ross and Revere are happy for us to settle minor matters between us, and believe me, students who have been here a year have a much better idea how close they can get to that line without drawing their attention than you do. Savvy?”

Larry hesitated and then nodded. “I get it.”

“Now,” Doug continued. “One exception to not taking things out of here is across the way in our library. You can take board games or card games over here as long as you put them back when you’re done. As long as no one’s studying here, we’re not going to be a pain about keeping quiet, but around the end of the year it gets overflow from the study rooms, so better to be quiet back then. And you can read here if you want. Same rule as games, keep the books here – or if you take them to one of the study rooms, make sure to put them back.”

Alex stepped into the room and looked around. The library was about the same size as the game room and all four walls had bookshelves up, filled with text-books. Freestanding shelves at either end seemed to represent a limited selection of fiction, but it was much better than he’d thought he’d find. He got a feeling he’d be coming back here soon.

Returning to the tail end of the tour he got a quizzical look from Jason Wilder, who gestured to the door ahead. “The kitchen, you just missed Doug’s spiel. In short, if you make a mess you’d better clean it up.”

“Got it.”

“And if we leave something in the fridges, it’s at our own risk.”

Alex nodded. “Is there anywhere more secure?”

“You can get a small cooler for your room on request.” Wilder smirked. “Or just hang a bag out of your window once it gets colder. It’s as good as a freezer although there are scavengers out there too, I hear.”

“Birds?”

“Them too.”

Doug opened the last door in the corridor. “Okay, the main stairs are in the great hall, but each wing has its own here. There is an outside door -” he pointed. “But that’s a fire exit. If you open it, the alarm will sound and if we evacuate the building in the middle of winter because you couldn’t be bothered to go around to the main door, I suspect even Mr. Ross would look the other way as some of the seniors kicked your ass.”

He headed up the stairs and the group followed. Rob hung back with Jason and Alex, leaving ample room between him and Steve. “Christ, is it like medieval Europe? Summary justice from the upper classes?”

Jason shrugged. “Everywhere has rules. Look at it this way, in a couple of years you’ll be a Junior. Would you want some know-nothing froshes coming in and messing up your stuff?”

“No,” Rob admitted.

Doug had stopped the tour until everyone was off the stairs. “Okay, this is the corridor I’m the RA for. You can go to the others if I’m not around, of course, but the idea is that I’m the first point of contact for you. My room’s 230, where the corridor meets the central wing, and there are nine double rooms along here, along with a bathroom. Everyone rooming along here gets a locker in the bathroom because we can’t stop the others using it if for some reason they want to.”

He pulled out his phone. “This isn’t just freshmen, but it’s mostly you and sophomores down here. Seniors get first pick of the rooms upstairs and most of the juniors are up there too. Okay, Rooms 231, 234 and 235 have been requested by students who had them last year. You’ll meet them tomorrow or the next day as sophomores and upwards start to arrive.” Hobbit pulled out index cards and slotted them into the fittings on each of the three named rooms. “So that leaves six rooms for the rest of you to choose from. Does anyone have a preference right now?”

Rob shook his head. “If he’s rooming here, I want a different corridor,” he said, pointing at Steve.

“I’d rather not smell you either,” Steven told him.

“Yeah… I think separating you is for the best,” the Junior agreed with a sigh. “Fine. Rob, I’ll talk with my counterparts… actually, let me text one of them now…” He fiddled with his phone. “Steve, pick a roommate?”

Jason shrugged. “I’d be up for it.”

“Works for me.” Steve pushed open the door to the unclaimed room 232. “This looks fine to me.”

Doug handed Jason an index card and the boy scribbled both names on the card, dropping it into the holder.

Thomas looked over at Alex. “We got on fine on the bus, how about we take the next room?”

Alex glanced at his only other option – Larry – and shrugged. “May as well.”

“Awesome!” The larger boy took an index card from Hobbit and started filling it out.

Doug started to put his phone away and then stopped as it pinged. “Okay, Rob. You can go put your name down for 216. Your RA will be Robert Garret – codename Geos. He’s got a system, so you don’t get to pick your room.”

“As long as I’m not with Steve I don’t care.”

“Does that mean I get a single?” asked Larry.

“No, we’ll drop another freshman on you as they arrive. But you can pick a room for now.” Another index card was offered and Larry scrawled his name on it before putting it on the door of room 239, opposite Hobbit’s room.

“Furthest from the bathroom,” Hobbit warned.

“Nearest to the main stairs,” Larry pointed out. “What’s this next to me?” he added. There was another door between his room and the mirroring room for the other end of the wing, facing the passage to the central wing. “Another dorm room?”

“No, it’s a community room. Shared with the next wing along.”

“Not mine?” asked Rob.

“No, you’re over the other side. Jesus, what is it with you two?”

“What isn’t it?” Steve said drily. “He’s still bitching about me tripping over his dog in first-grade.”

“Tripping, hell. You kicked Edgey on purpose!”

“You see? And that somehow makes throwing eggs at my bedroom window alright?”

“I wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t screwed with my art project.”

“Oh Jesus. Cut it out.” Doug shook his head in disgust.

Alex frowned. “You said something about codenames… Geos. Why does he have a codename?”

“We pretty much all do. Except Poe. But he’s an ass.” Hobbit shrugged. “One-part tradition to honour the masked hero community, one-part security. The school files all records about your powers and how you do in the squads under your codename, if you have one, so that if anyone does get hold of the data that they can’t link it back to your real name.”

“Who picks them?” asked Thomas. “Because I recall from somewhere that navy pilots don’t get to pick their callsigns.”

“Nah. That’s hazing. Poe wouldn’t get away with not having one if they could be chosen for us. We pick ‘em. Just make sure you’re okay about it because the admins don’t like having to update everything just so you can change it.”

Hobbit glanced around. “Okay, let’s take the main stairs down so you can fetch your bags and put them in your room.” He led them into the central area and pointed to the other southern wing of the dorm. “You’ll be down there, Rob. 216 is at the far end.”

Downstairs, Mr. Ross clearing up the used plates and setting out some fresh food. “All done, Hobbit?”

“Done upstairs and this floor,” the RA replied. “Geos and I are going to share doing the basement when his batch arrive. I’ll do the campus walk once everyone’s sorted their bags – go do that, guys, then meet me outside!”

Alex missed any further conversation between Doug and Mr. Ross, taking his bag upstairs. Thomas got there first and dropped his bag on one of the beds so Alex assumed the other was his and put his bag down accordingly.

“Decent sized room.” Thomas dropped to one knee and squinted at the floor. “Four double plug sockets, two here for the bedside tables, and it looks like one for each desk.” The room was set up symmetrically, with a bed, bedside table, desk and chair on either side. There was a single large wardrobe – when Alex pulled open the doors, it was divided in half, each door revealing a hanging space and several shelves. “Could do with a bit more head-room though,” added Thomas and suddenly he loomed over Alex, having to bend to avoid bashing his head on the ceiling tiles.

“What the hell!” Alex exclaimed. Thomas looked like he must be at least half-again his previous height.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Thomas shrank slowly back to his previous height. “This is my power.”

“How big can you get?”

“Near enough as tall as this whole building,” the boy said rather smugly. “Not the usual meaning of ‘big guy on campus, but pretty rad.”

“Rad?”

“Okay, that was a bit nineties,” admitted Thomas. “And you teleport?”

“More… hmm. Let me show you.” Alex concentrated on the castle, hoping this worked or he’d be embarrassing himself. He took a step…

And the dorm-room and Thomas was replaced with the quiet of the castle’s main hall, sunlight streaming in through the windows high on one wall and onto the tarp-covered pile of Alex’s luggage. Taking one of the bags, Alex replaced the weights holding the tarp in place and focused himself on the dorm-room. It came to mind easily and just like that…

“That is awesome!” declared Thomas. “So you can just fetch all your stuff now?”

“I could.” Alex put the bag down and looked at the door, seeing that Doug was already outside in the space between the wings. “But I think our fearless leader expects us down for the rest of the tour so I’ll leave unpacking for later.”

*

It did take a few more minutes for everyone to get outside, time that Alex used to grab another of the pork pies from the prepared food. Mr. Ross didn’t object to it and Thomas had grabbed a pair of sandwiches, carrying them in a napkin.

“Right,” Doug said briskly. “We’re going to go right through Drake first. Lots of interesting stuff there.”

Drake Hall was in the same general style as the other buildings but it filled almost the entire plot – or block, Alex guessed? – with two long and wide wings linked at the north and south-ends by small entrance lobbies.

Hobbit pushed the doors open and ushered them inside. “On the left are the school workshops,” he advised. “Lots of interesting stuff there if you’re interested – there are classes but they also do a lot of maintenance for stuff around the school. Always something going on there during the semester. Steve and Rob, I see you’re both down to work here in the evenings. I strongly advise you don’t let this feud of yours get ahead of you here. Messing around with heavy tools is no joke.”

“I won’t if he won’t,” Rob grunted.

Steve shook his head. “Like I ever start anything.”

“Except that time with Daisy-Mae.”

“That was nothing to do with me, Rob!”

Alex suspected from Steve’s grin that he wasn’t being at all truthful about that. Hobbit shook his head. “Anyway, the workshops aren’t open yet, so on our right…” He led them through the next door past a cashier’s desk manned by a man in what Alex guessed was a security uniform, “Here we are in the school shop.”

Alex couldn’t help but gawk. He’d thought maybe something about the size of a glorified corner shop, but the shop filled the full floor and there were two mezzanine levels up above, linked by stairs and a lift in one corner. It was more like a department store than a mini-mart, although he could see there was frozen and dry food available at the far end of the shop.

“This is just a school shop?” Thomas asked out loud.

Hobbit grinned. “It’s about an hour by boat to Warroad, which is the nearest place with stores worth mentioning. Angle Inlet is tiny – not bad if you want a rustic place for a date, but if you want anything like deodorant or the like, it’s here or spending half a day just getting to and from town. I know what I prefer.”

“Makes sense.” Larry picked up a sweater from a nearby stand. “Not all that expensive.”

“Granted that we’re a captive market, the school knows that we’re also of limited means unless our parents are feeling particularly generous. Don’t ask me how they afford to keep this place stocked.” Doug told them. “Come on. We’re going out the far end.”

There was a cashier’s desk at the other end too, although it wasn’t manned. “Some kids work here, although I don’t think a Freshman would be trusted with it – handling money, you know. They tend to want to have an idea about who they’re giving that sort of job.”

Outside the far end of Drake Hall, Doug pointed down to the lake. “And there we have our docks,” he said with some pride. “Two hovercraft – we have three but the third is up on stocks going through maintenance. That’s about normal, that way we can be sure of always having one handy in an emergency.”

“Hovercraft?” asked Steve. “I’d have thought ice breakers.”

Hobbit shook his head. “We could use them, but once the lake ices up, it’s thick enough to drive over. And they’re fast.” His face lit up, “It’s a ton of fun to drive something like that – I work crew on them. Three evenings a week, twice on Saturday and once on Sunday, we go across the lake and back to pick up supplies. Passenger places are first come, first served but you can book places through the school intranet.”

Alex eyed the two parked hovercraft warily. He’d never even seen one before, but the big fans looked like they’d put out a lot of force. The ‘dock’ had the piers he’d expect, so presumably they were set up for normal boats as well, but the hovercraft were on a sloped concrete surface that ran down into the water. “So, you can get in and out of the school by road and by water?”

“There’s a helicopter as well. I can’t show you since that’s restricted action, but in emergencies that can move people in and out. Mostly it picks up patients for the Hospice.”

“The school feels a lot more isolated to think you might need to take a boat to get here if the roads are impassable,” Rob noted. “Not like back home.”

“If the weather really socks us in, then no one gets in or out of the school,” Hobbit told them. “Last year was the only year we didn’t get totally cut off, at least for a few days. Not something to worry about, really. We’re set up for it.”

“A few days without classes?” Thomas said hopefully.

Jason snorted. “Nope. Nothing stops classes.”

“You’d probably be drafted to dig a few of the buildings out,” Hobbit told Alex’s roommate. “But the basements of all the dorms and halls are connected so we can get back and forth whatever the weather is like.”

“How cold do the dorms get?”

“Not very,” the older boy told him reassuringly. “The walls are thick and well-insulated. Take a look at the window when you get back to your room and you’ll see it’s double-insulated and there are shutters on the inside if you still find it too cold. The heating’s under the dorm parents’ control but if you’re feeling too cold, let them know and they’ll see if they can turn it up for your room.”

He pointed across the main road, noticeably wider than the one between Ocampo Dorm and Drake Hall. “And across the way we have Quesada Hall, another place you’ll be visiting every day.”

The building was of the same general layout as Drake but both sides were clearly in use. “On the left admin,” Doug said and took them in. “This is where all the senior staff have their offices,” he explained in a low voice. “Also, the central security office. Mr. Colton’s domain. Word is that he was a pretty big name on one side or another of the capes game for years – I’ve seen him shut down a brawl with a dozen kids, single-handedly, so if he tells you to jump, I suggest you ask any questions from mid-hop.”

“Do you get many brawls?”

“You have superpowers, you’re going to want to try them out. Throw in a hundred or so kids with the same issue and sooner or later two or more of them will want to find out who’s top dog.”

The way Steve and Rob were eyeing each other made Alex nervous. “There was something about mandatory punishments for violence.”

“Yeah.” Doug sighed. “But informally, if you step out into the woods where no one can see you and no one gets seriously hurt then a lot of the staff won’t bust their asses to find out the details. Jump someone in front of security of the cameras and expect to get the book thrown at you, but that’s more for being stupid than for fighting.”

“And if someone gets hurt? Or… you know?” asked Larry.

“Then expect to be talking to Dr. Franck. Mr. Colton can do a pretty good Superman impersonation and when he’s speaking to the Doctor he’s yes-sir, no-sir, three-bags-full-sir, so that should tell you what the pecking order is.”

Steven snorted. “Superman? Really?”

Doug paused and then looked out the window. “Let me show you something.” He pointed out at where the coast curved out. “You see that tree at the end? Separated a little from the other trees?”

“Yeah.”

“There was another tree between it and the rest of the forest. Last spring, Viperia started acting up because the seats on the hovercraft were taken and threw a punch at Mr. Colton.”

“Who is Viperia?”

“Junior from West Africa. Crazy bitch, she’s been through at least six triggers, claims to be a demi-god when she thinks she can get away with it.”

Alex gulped. Six triggers? That was insane. They said that the first Major Victory had had four, back in World War II, and he’d taken out an entire tank battalion in the Ardennes.

“What happened?” asked Rob eagerly.

“He hit her back. She went through that tree and he flew after her. When he dragged her back, she spent three days in the Hospice before she could go back to class. And I know she heals fast, so he must have beat the hell out of her.”

“That’s got to be a mile away!” exclaimed Steve.

“Yah.” Doug nodded solemnly. “Extreme example, but you get the idea. Don’t give security any trouble or you’ll regret it.”

“What happened about Colton hitting her?”

Jason shook his head. “She started it, so nothing. Dad wasn’t all that happy, but I saw her near Colton just before the end of the school year and she seemed more impressed with him than afraid.”

“…what is up with this place?” Alex muttered.

Thomas rubbed his chin. “I think I may need to re-evaluate what it takes to be a big man around here.”

“Doug,” a female voice called from the far end of the corridor.

Everyone turned and saw a rather pretty young woman in leggings and a tight top, leading some mostly familiar girls into the corridor through a door at the far end.

“Yo, Captain Marvel.”

The woman made a face. “Cut that out, Hobbit.”

“I’m so sorry, Kris.” He didn’t sound very sincere. “These your froshes?”

“The freshmen on my tour yes.” She glanced at the boys with Alex, fairly dismissively, he thought. “I’d have thought you’d have gone through the other side.”

“I didn’t want to distract them,” Doug said. “Kids, this is Kristine Griswold, better known as Victory. She’s one of those masochistic types I mentioned earlier who want to be RA’s two years in a row.”

“Thanks a bunch.” She gestured towards him. “Ladies, this joker is Doug Ashmore, called Hobbit for obvious reasons. If you absolutely cannot find any other authority figure in an emergency, he’s more or less reliable.”

“I am speechless that you think so highly of me,” exclaimed the Junior. “Words simply cannot express my feelings of wonder. I may never speak again, lest I soil this moment in my memory.”

“Could I have that in writing?” Victory asked, obviously unimpressed by Doug’s verbosity. “Okay, ladies, move it along.”

Alex exchanged a casual wave with Nina as she went past the group.

“Nice girl,” Larry commented.

“Wound a bit tight,” conceded Hobbit. “But her heart’s in the right place, along with other bodily organs. I thought she’d be doing a Teaching Assistant stint for the flight class not Resident Advisor, but no one asked me.”

“She can fly?”

“Yep. All the way to orbit in fact. I hear NASA is sponsoring her here and through college, since her powers make her a natural astronaut.”

“Not kept out of it, the way that we are out of sports?” asked Steve curiously.

Doug shrugged. “Obviously. Anyway, through here -” The door that Kristine had entered the corridor through, “We have the other side of Quesada Hall. Before we move on, follow me through to the far more interesting side of the Hall.” He grinned puckishly and opened the double doors.

There was only a single mezzanine level here, but the east side of the Hall was a single huge space. Underneath the mezzanine were serving stations but the rest of the room was full of tables and chairs. “Gentlemen,” Doug said reverently, “This is where they feed us. Three times a day, no less.”

“So it’s a canteen?” Thomas asked mildly.

“That is sacrilege, Mr. Russell.” Hobbit waved one finger reprovingly. “You’re all growing boys, you more than most, so you’ll not want to miss this place. More seriously, it’s pretty good stuff and a big selection. It also doubles as an auditorium for school assemblies – there’ll be one on Friday morning to welcome you – and graduation ceremonies if the weather’s not good enough for using the quad. Anyone with appropriate powers or just four working limbs might get pulled off their usual job to help set that up and then get the tables out again since they need to do it pretty damn quickly.”

While there was an exit at the other end, he didn’t lead them back to it, instead crossing the dining hall to the mid-point where double doors led directly to the outside.

“There’s no point going further south,” he told them. “There’s Kingsley Dorm, which is just like Ocampo, but with girls, and staff cottages. Which you shouldn’t visit barring emergencies. This is Konscak Hall, which you’ll all have to visit though – it’s one of the main class buildings.”

The layout reminded Alex of the dorm, but orientated the other way, with the two side wings running east and west rather than north-south.

“There are classrooms in the side-wings,” Hobbit pointed out as he walked between them to the central wing and pushed open the door. “Washrooms and stairs here in the middle, although each wing has its own stairs at the far end. Teachers have offices on the top floor – most of them have office hours where you can drop by and ask questions if you’re getting stuck on something. Don’t bother anyone you don’t actually have classes with unless it’s an emergency. They get a bit shirty about that. Anyway, all the classrooms are about the same here and in Galeano across the way. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”

Rather than take them back out or into the wings he opened the door into the opposite courtyard and they trooped out across that and down onto the quad that Alex remembered from being driven onto the campus.

“So the Quad… is a big field, basically. Sometimes you just need the space.” Doug pointed to his right – north, Alex remembered. “The sports hall. Phys Ed, basically. Not sports, it’s learning to use your powers mostly. Some exercise – if the dorm parents think you’re a bit too couch potato you can be sent there for supervised exercise which is no fun. And squad skirmishes, which are a ton of fun.”  
“What are they?”

“You know the danger room thing that the X-Men have?” Doug asked. “Basically that. There’s whole bunch of rooms dug out under the school that are about as big as the dining hall and reinforced so we can cut loose with powers. You form squads – if you can’t find one you’ll be put on one – and then have little matches.”

“…like, fighting each other?” asked Larry.

“Not like fighting, actually fighting. Supervised, of course.” Doug looked at them. “Being a mutant is dangerous, kids. Unless you’re very lucky, you survive by knowing how to deal with danger. So, the staff here will put you in just enough danger that you learn to deal with it.”

Alex shivered. “What if you don’t want to do it?”

“What if you don’t want to be mugged? Or to be in a bank when some yahoo with powers decides he wants to blast his way into the bank and empty their safe?” Doug shrugged. “Physical education is mandatory here at AVM. If you want to sit it out, you’re gonna have to weasel your way out, but the staff aren’t going to be sympathetic.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad,” Thomas decided. “Hey, you can just teleport out, Alex. You’ll be fine.”

“…I guess,” he said dubiously.

“It’s a valid approach. The point isn’t to win fights.” Doug turned to face them. “It’s to survive. In between that sort of exercise, there are other physical education options – you can sign up for martial arts classes, for example. But everyone gets put into one of those scenarios at least once a month during the school year. Not because anyone wants you to get hurt… but so that you don’t get hurt for real if something like that actually happens in the outside world.”

“I’m not sure my parents signed up for that,” Larry said slowly. He sounded interested though.

“If you’re here, then they did. It’s a dealbreaker for some parents, one reason there aren’t so many kids here as there could be. Trust me, if your parents hadn’t agreed to this then you wouldn’t have spent a good chunk of today coming out here.”

Hobbit pointed to his right again, looking south this time. “The building down there is the other reason for AVM. Angelsey Hospice is the best hospital in the world for mutants. If something goes wrong and you get hurt, that’s where you’ll be taken. There are patients from outside the school too, but they’re mostly at the back and they aren’t supposed enter the rest of the school.”

“So, what are the buildings across the way?” asked Steve.

Doug nodded and turned again. “Okay, to the left of the entrance, that’s Coronado Dorm. It’s adjacent to the Hospice because it houses kids who need special treatment or are considered at risk of needing it. Some of them can’t leave without protective gear, fortunately not many of them.”

Alex winced at that, and he wasn’t the only one.

“I guess we lucked out,” Rob said.

Doug nodded. “Mutagene can be kind of a bitch, sometimes. Most of them don’t want pity, but they don’t exactly encourage visitors either so they can be a bit clannish at times.” He shrugged. “And on the other side of the entrance is Brule Hall, which has the school library and the science labs. A few normal classrooms too, but it’s mostly specialised. You might be asked over there for further testing of your powers. It can get interesting.”

He turned and walked north past Galeano Hall. “There used to be a club building in the corner between Brule Hall and the Sports Hall but apparently there was a… disagreement…”

“What sort of disagreement?”

“The sort of disagreement that led to three students being expelled and it being cheaper to knock down what was left than to repair it. Or so I’m told, it’s before my time.”

Larry frowned. “And it hasn’t been replaced?”

“Dr. Franck said he’d consider paying for a new building if we could go ten years without losing any of the other buildings. Four more years to go, so none of us will see it unless one of you gets held back a year.” Doug shrugged. “Anyway, round the corner here and we get back to Ocampo. Not a huge campus, but really, there are only about three hundred people here at most.”

“Which is most of the people in the Angle, isn’t it?” asked Alex.

“Yeah, there’s basically us and Angle Inlet, plus maybe some tourists in the summer – but most of the school is empty then, so I suppose it evens out.”

“It’s a long way for tourists to come.”

“Not day trippers, unless they’re really obsessive. But there are cabins up near the Inlet, so sometimes people come up for fishing holidays. If parents are coming here to pick up or deliver their offspring then they can rent one overnight and not have to get from Winnipeg to here and back in one day,” Hobbit explained. “It’s not that expensive, I think the owners are just glad to get some money out of the place in the off-season.”

* * *

Back at Ocampo a lanky young man with a short beard was waiting outside. “Hi Doug.”

“Geos.” Doug grabbed hold of Rob and hustled him forward. “Here’s our problem child. Rob, Robert. Robert, Rob. Please feel free to be confused.”

The man shook his head in amusement. “Thank you, Douglas. Now, my own charges have got here, although I gather they’re actually going to be in your wing.”

“I’m expecting five,” Doug agreed.

“And we’ve managed not to lose any. Wonderful.” Robert – or should Alex call him by his codename? – waved them into the great room where Mr. Ross was overseeing five teenagers as they ate. “Okay, kids. Introduction times. “This his Hobbit, also known as Doug Ashmore, who’ll be your RA. And with him are some of the freshmen who got here before you.”

Three of the boys were pretty obviously Asian, one of them easily as large as Thomas. “I’m Qiu Shing,” he snapped at Thomas. “Who are you?”

“Thomas Russell. Pleased to meet you, Qiu.” Thomas offered his hand.

The other boy didn’t take it. “Qiu is my family name,” he informed them. “Not my personal name.”  
“Then you can call me Mr. Russell, since we’re not on first name terms.” Apparently unphased, Thomas turned to the next boy and extended his hand again.

“Hi. I’m Wang Xun – they call me Baii Hou!” This boy accepted the offered hand and shook it enthusiastically. “It is good to meet you, Thomas. Although not so good as if you were an American girl, you understand?”

“Well there are some getting tours from their dorm,” Alex offered. “I’m Alex. Welcome to AVM… Bay-Ou?”

“Baii Hou,” Xun corrected him. “Or Xun is fine. And this is Cong Feng.”

The last boy bowed rather than shaking hands. “We are to be neighbours, we should get along, yes?” he said to Qiu Shing as the introductions went around.

“…fine. Shing then,” the boy said, shaking hands with Larry. He didn’t approach Thomas again though, as the other names were exchanged. Besides the three Asians – they were all Chinese it turned out – there was Pavel Zavarev, from Russia, and one more American, Daniel Paine, who hung back after introductions and let the others talk.

“Let’s do the basement first, then you can agree rooms and I’ll do the rest of the tour for the new arrivals,” Geos proposed and pointed down the stairs.

With a full thirteen of them they more or less filled the hallway below, Alex realised. It didn’t feel claustrophobic as such, but he had a feeling that if a hundred or so boys were all using it to get to classes through the basement then it might get problematic in a hurry.

“Okay, three doors down here.” Doug pointed out. “The middle is a no-go for all of us – it’s the girl’s toilet, for any occasions when some are visiting. The only one they can use, hopefully they will be over often enough to justify it. There’s a gents next to it (personally I think they just didn’t know what else to do with it since there are two washrooms right upstairs but I didn’t design the place…”

“Yes, thank you Doug.” Geos shook his head. “And on the left, there’s a preparation area – not a kitchen but somewhere you can keep food warm or cold while you’re waiting to serve it through in the next room.”

“What’s the next room?” asked Rob.

Geos opened double doors. “Our main function room,” he declared. “Great for parties, which is the plan tonight. Actually, every night until Thursday. It’s a bit tamer through the school year, but Halloween and the like; or if some of you want to organise something, you’re welcome to do so. Just be aware that if you’re organising it, you’re responsible for cleaning up afterwards.”

The function room was pretty large, Alex guessed it filled the entire wing. He saw an emergency exit at the far and another door that might be storage, as he glanced through.

“Back along this way there’s a small gym and locker room,” Geos pointed down a narrow hall. “We have two down here, that’s the one with the weight machines, running machines, all the elaborate stuff. The other side is more open for if you want to practise martial arts or the like. And at the far end there’s some storage – somewhere you can leave suitcases or whatever else you brought from home that you don’t want. Winter clothes can stay down there for now, then summer stuff once it starts getting cold in a few weeks. Up to you. Dorm parents have the keys, so don’t put anything there you might need on a moment’s notice – they’ll let you in when they have the chance, but that might not be immediate.”

“What Rob missed in his haste to show you the function room,” Doug cut in, “Are the small TV rooms down here, one at each end of the central wing. Not small TVs, they’re pretty big,” He held the door open to prove it. “But small rooms.”

Inside, Alex saw that the screens actually took up most of the wall with three rows of three folding seats facing it, meaning the room was laid out like a mini-theatre.

“Not bad if you want to watch sports,” Steve noted enthusiastically.

“That and films,” agreed Doug. “You gotta book them. Generally, a day in advance is safe, but sporting events can be booked way ahead. They can’t both be booked for the same thing at the same time – if you have that many people wanting to watch something, the function room can have a screen set up – and if you have spare seats then you can’t stop someone coming in uninvited to watch with you.”

“Moving… make room please. Moving along.” Geos went back past the stairs. “The other TV room is here,” he pointed northwards, “Along with the other gym I mentioned, more storage and the boilers and what not that keep the place warm.”

“There’s a back-up on the other side that he forgot to mention,” Doug added loudly enough to be overheard.

“Chances are you’ll never need to go near them and you shouldn’t without express instructions from Mr. Ross or Mr. Revere,” Robert continued without acknowledging the interruption. “The gym leads into a locker room. And on the far side of that is the jacuzzi and the sauna. It might seem a bit much, but when it gets colder a hot bath is a damn good idea.”

“Saunas are real civilisation,” Pavel said enthusiastically. “I was afraid I would not find one until I got back to Russia.”

“Whatever you say,” Thomas said dubiously. “Is this the passageway that leads to the rest of the school?” he asked, staring at the door that cut off the passage about where the end of the building should be.”

“Exactly,” Robert said, walking down the passage a little. “It’s a little wider than the other passages, to allow for heavier traffic, but please try to stay to the righthand side, it makes for fewer collisions. These doors on the right are meeting rooms – there are three of them, first come first served with no reservations. Not bad for study sessions, or if you’re with the D&D herd I think they usually grab one for their games.”

“Nerds,” Rob snorted, which dissuaded Alex from asking more about that – at least for now. He’d heard of Dungeons and Dragons and watched videos about it on youtube; but he’d never come across anyone that played it. Perhaps this would be his opportunity?

“It’s not everyone’s taste, but they’re not hurting anyone.” Geos opened the door just short of the exit to the rest of the school. “And these stairs take us back up to the upper levels, right on Hobbit’s corridor. Would you like to do the honours?”

  
“Why certainly, but age before beauty.” Doug took the door and waved Geos through.

“You are definitely asking for it, next time our squads tangle,” the senior grumbled good-naturedly.

When they reached the first floor – second by American count – Cong Feng asked Qiu Shing something in a low voice. Alex couldn’t make head nor tails of it so he guessed it was Mandarin or Cantonese, perhaps Larry would know which, and they moved up to the end to the room which Larry had claimed.

“I’ve got that one,” he said to them.

Shing glared at him but then they backtracked and laid claim together to the room before it, 238.

That left an awkward exchange between Daniel, Xun and Pavel, each looking at the others but not willing to say anything.

“Toss a coin,” suggested Hobbit after a moment. “You all have coins, right? Odd one out rooms with Larry.”

“It seems very random,” Pavel said dubiously.

“Look, I’m planning on taking Cantonese,” pointed out Larry. “How about you room with me, Xun? Then I can hit you up for tips.”

“If I can ask you for tips on how the important business of dating goes here in the US,” the Chinese boy agreed. “Have fun, you two,” he said to the last two freshmen.

Doug grinned. “Don’t worry, guys, you’re not married or anything,” he told Daniel and Pavel. “We can always look at shuffling you around if it turns out you really don’t get on. But look at this way, you’ve come here not knowing anyone and now there’s someone you each has to get to know!”

Pavel sighed and opened the door to the nearest room, the one at the extreme end of the wing, separated from the other freshmen by two rooms claimed by sophomore pairs. “This one, Daniel?”

“’Kay,” the other boy said, tugging on the bulky sweater he was wearing.

“Great, all sorted then.” Geos smacked his hands together. “Get your bags up here and then I’ll take those of you who’ve just arrived the rest of the tour.”

“We’ll sort out luggage for the rest of you one at a time,” Doug added. “If you want to come with me to see Mr. Ross now, Larry, we’ll start with you. If the rest of you can stay in your rooms, or at least up here, until I’ve got you all straightened out”

Alex coughed. “Uh…”

“You’re the kid taking care of his own, right?” Doug shrugged. “That’s fine. You’re free to go exploring or whatever, same for everyone else once I’ve sorted your stuff out.”

“Thanks.”

“Want me to help with your stuff?” asked Thomas.

“I think I’ll take another walk. Look around on my own time, sort out unpacking later,” Alex told him. “But thanks anyway.”

“Sure, I know how it is. Sometimes it’s just too cramped inside.”

Actually, I just want some time on my own, Alex thought. I’ve not had more than a brief moment alone since… yesterday? I’m going to go crazy if I can’t have at least a little privacy. “We’re okay to use powers here?” he asked Geos.

“Sure.”

“Perfect.” Alex visualised the castle and then stepped across into the other world. The quiet was a balm he felt in dire need of right now.


	5. Good Mourning

The other door at the far end of the function room wasn’t storage, Alex discovered. It was a DJ booth and Thomas had attempted to claim control of music for the party that evening, only to wind-up first arguing and then collaborating with another boy over what they would play.

They seemed happy with the result but Alex couldn’t say that he was. It was a bit too loud and as far as he could make out from the lyrics, the songs were somewhat repetitively about ‘keeping’ girls, finding grass – which even he knew meant drugs – and the other ‘highlights’ of the gangsta subculture.

He was willing to admit that his own taste in music wasn’t exactly classical, but he knew what he liked and this wasn’t it.

No one seemed interested in dancing, possibly because there weren’t any girls. Not that he’d have wanted to dance particularly, and Alex simply… didn’t know what to do. Parties weren’t something he’d ever attended, at least not since he was too old for birthday parties with cake and kids from school, church and the neighbourhood. Not that he knew many kids where he lived… where his family lived, these days. Moving when he was eleven had meant he made a pretty clean break with primary school friends.

Church. Huh. There wasn’t a church on the campus, or anywhere in the Angle. He’d never considered himself particularly religious but there was something to having people you knew. The hovercraft run on Sunday was timed to allow students to go to churches in Warroad if they chose to, but that community was otherwise out of touch. And he had no idea if the churches were anything like those at home. Did he really want to go to one without family to fall back on?

I suppose I could get people there more easily than taking one of the hovercraft. Which might at least be a way to meet more people and see if there’s anyone –

“Alex!” Larry caught a moment. “Do you have a moment?”

“Let me check my busy schedule… yeah, I can fit you in. What’s up?”

“I was thinking about that skirmish squad thing, how do you feel about getting ahead of the curve?”

“It sounds good in principle… what do you have in mind?” They hadn’t even had a class of Phys Ed yet, wasn’t this a bit early?

Larry nodded. “We have the core of a pretty decent squad, I was thinking. You’re probably the best teleporter in the school, Thomas can be a powerhouse and I can fly. If we can round up a couple more members, we should be able to ace that class.”

Alex hesitated. “It sounds good in principle,” he repeated. “But do you know exactly how they form the squads?”

“I’ve asked some questions,” Larry said. “We can definitely form our own and they generally don’t want more than a one-year age range – which is fine because the Sophs will have their own squads already set up. If we move fast, we can get the best of the Freshmen together and be the ace team of our year. Do you want in?”

“Okay. I’m in.”

“Great, do you want to ask Thomas?” Larry slapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll see who else we want in.”

“Uh…” But Larry was gone.

Great. It had sounded to Alex like Thomas was already onboard, but now it was up to him to recruit his roommate. Well, at least now he knew what he was going to be doing.

The noise – music, technically speaking – was almost painfully loud near the booth where Thomas was holed up. As Alex approached, he realised the door was open and heard raised voices. It wasn’t until he got back of the speakers that he made out Thomas saying, “No, we’re not messing with those. We’ve been here one day and I’m not pissing off Mr. Ross over it.”

“That musclehead doesn’t know anything about the lasers in this light system.” The voice wasn’t one that Alex recognised. “I am an expert in all lasers. I can make them do things he couldn’t even imagine.”

“I’m sure you could.” Alex heard his roommate said. “But not tonight, okay?”

Entering the booth, which was crowded with four people, Alex was surprised that it was Danny arguing with Thomas.

“Hey, Big Tom. Your song, your pick,” the other DJ pointed out.

“Sure, gimme a second…”

“Listen to me, not to him. This party needs lights, it needs action.”

“Danno, it needs another song, one thing at a time.”

“My name is not Danno!”

Alex blinked at the snap of the voice. What happened to the shy Danny he’d seen earlier? “Uh. I… I’d like to hear about those lasers you’re talking about, Danny.”

Thomas gave him a grateful look. “Great idea! Alex is a smart guy, you explain it all to him and then we can sell it to Mr. Ross.”

Danny frowned. “I suppose it is too much to expect you to understand without my genius,” he said, rather petulantly. “Very well.” He turned sharply towards Alex. “These are being criminally under-utilised. Do you see that they have the potential for holographic projection if properly programmed?”

Seeing his roommate had returned his attention to the sound-system, Alex backed up, “And how would you do that?” he asked.

The other boy followed him, eyes brightening as he expounded about ‘converging the beams’, ‘dynamic timing’ and lapsed into other technical terms that didn’t make the slightest mistake to Alex. But nodding and vague questions kept Danny talking enthusiastically as they moved away from the booming sound system. Alex noticed that the other freshmen gave them both a wide berth, which was understandable but not exactly helpful.

“And where does leave us?” he asked as Danny seemed to reach what was – to him, at least – a grand conclusion.

“It leaves us…” He broke off and sagged suddenly, his previous confident bearing hunching in. “Oh fuck, I did it again.”

“Are you okay?”

It was hard to tell under the sweater, but Danny seemed to sag in on himself. Alex realised the boy was very lightly built, absent his previous attitude he seemed barely old enough to be attending high school. “I… ow.” He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a small bottle and unscrewed the lid. The tablet inside looked like an ordinary paracetamol and he dry-swallowed. “Headache,” he mumbled apologetically. “Sorry.”

“Do you want something to wash it down?” Alex offered. He hated dry swallowing pills.

“Thanks.”

There was soda over near the door to the food prep area and Alex poured them both cups of Pepsi. “Here.”

Danny took a big swallow and coughed.

“Take it easy.”

“I know… I try… Ugh.” The boy put his cup down on the table and massaged his forehead with both fingers. “Sorry, it’s Alex isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve got what they call Mad Scientist Syndrome.”

“Uh…” Alex looked blank. “Like… I dunno…?”

“’They kicked me out of the academy! I’ll show them all’,” Danny explained. “There’s a technical term but pretty much no one remembers it. It comes and goes, but sometimes I’m just a thundering asshole.”

“I think it’s called being a teenager.”

“Heh.” Danny brightened for a moment and then winced, rubbing his head. “And when it’s done, my head hurts for hours.”

“I guess the music isn’t helping then.” Alex offered.

“Not exactly.” Danny picked up his cup again and sipped more cautiously. “Thanks for talking me down. I have no sense of other people’s property. I see something shiny and I want to use it.”  
“I didn’t really follow much of what you said at all,” admitted Alex. He gestured to the door. “Want to step outside?”

“Sounds like a plan.” Danny followed him through the food prep room, with its refrigerators and hot-plates, and then out into the basement hall. “Oh, that is better,” he sighed. “Thanks. Don’t worry about anything I said. It doesn’t make sense to anyone but me and it doesn’t work for anyone but me. Like I said, Mad Scientist Syndrome.”

“Like that…” Alex tried to remember the term. “Schimmel-something?”

“Schimmelhorn, yes. Crazy-me doesn’t get it, but what I build doesn’t work for anyone else to copy. I can make it and give it to someone, but I’m the only one who can fix it or make another. It’s why the sky isn’t lousy with flying cars even though every big-name mutant in the 50s and 60s seemed to have one.”  
“Well, that and flight regulations.”

“Yeah.” Danny nodded cautiously and only flinched a little. “Fender-benders at four hundred yards are a little more serious than they on the ground.”

“Just a little bit,” Alex agreed. He yawned. Well, he hadn’t managed to sleep on the plane last night, it was no surprise he was knackered, he thought. “I think I’m done for the night.”

“Sorry to have spoiled the party for you.”

“You didn’t,” Alex assured him. “I flew over from the UK last night so I’m jet-lagged anyway. And to be honest I was at a bit of a loose end anyway.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“I’m not a real party animal.”

Danny finished his drink. “I’d better crash too. If I sleep the headache off, I should hopefully be okay tomorrow.”

“Have you got a counsellor appointment too?”

“Yeah. I don’t know why they don’t do all these placement tests before we even get here.”

“Well, they probably think we’d cheat,” Alex pointed out.

“My mom would kill me if I tried that.”

Alex nodded. “My own parents wouldn’t be too pleased, but some might even aid and abet if they thought it’d get their kids a leg up. I used to go to Parent-Teacher meetings with my folks and it was amazing the sort of thing you overhear.”

“Do they let kids attend those over in the UK?”

“It’s not expected, but no one asked me to leave. I think my dad assumed that it was okay the first time and was surprised when I was the only kid who turned up. But I kept going, because at least I’d know what my teachers were saying about me.” Alex finished his cup and dropped it in the wastebin at the foot of the stairs.

Danny sighed. “Well I got chapter and verse of the last one Mom went to… although that was the one where I got expelled for, um, borrowing the DVD player from the A/V classroom and turning it into a forcefield projector.”

“…how would you do that?” Alex paused on the landing and looked at the smaller boy. “And why?” He thought about some of the things he’d heard about American high school. “Actually, I retract that last question.”

“Heh.” Danny looked half-proud and half-ashamed. “The working theory is that people like me actually warp physics a little.”

“Err?” Alex gave him a nervous look.

“Well, it’s not as if you doing… whatever it is that you do? …fits in with science as we know it. Superpowers kind of have an exemption to the laws of physics.”

“Or at least exploit some sort of loophole that science hasn’t caught up with yet.”

“Well that’s one view. Probably better than the idea that we’re using black magic.”

Alex started up the stairs again. “Is that actually a thing?”

“I don’t think even the Bible Belt hold with that idea these days, but there are supposed to be places where people still try to exorcise mutants. Or burn them as witches.”

“Eek.”

“Yeah,” Danny agreed. “Some of the kids from Africa and China aren’t just trying to avoid warlords by coming here. Remote tribes and villages are supposed to have a really bad habit of killing mutants the first chance they get. Getting rid of them before they take over.”

“I’m glad I live somewhere a little more civilised.”

They reached the second-floor corridor and Danny paused, looking around. “Yeah. This isn’t great but it’s a lot better than some of the alternatives.”

“What would you like to do if you had the choice?” asked Alex, one hand on the door to his room.

“I dunno. Probably hole up in my Mom’s garage or a scrapyard somewhere. Although that probably leads to me calling myself ‘Doctor Laserbeam’ or something and trying to take over Oregon.”

“…well you did say ‘mad scientist’.”

“It’s a meme for a reason,” Danny said heavily. “’Night, Alex.”

“Night.” He watched the other wander down to the far end of the corridor and then pushed open the bedroom door before Danny could turn and see he was being watched.

* * *

Alex was just about asleep when the door opened, spilling light across the room.

A moment later, crisps were spilled across the room too as Thomas entered, tripped over one of his bags and dropped a half-empty packet as he tried to keep his balance. “Jeez!”

“Careful.” Alex levered himself up and stared blearily at his roommate.

“Oh, Alex! I wondered where you were.”

“Jet lag,” Alex explained.

“Ah, sorry man. Great party, sorry you didn’t stick around for it.”

“Well, there’s tomorrow.” Alex squinted at his phone and saw the time. “Or tonight rather. They let you stay up past midnight?”

“Yeah, that Mr. Revere said if we were stupid enough not to go to bed at a sensible time then we shouldn’t whine to him about the consequences.”

“And you decided that you were totally stupid enough?”

Thomas paused, absently kicking his bag aside. For a moment Alex thought he’d gone too far, but then the larger boy grinned. “Heh, nice one. That’s that dry wit, you Brits are famous for. It’s fine, I stayed up like this all the time back home.”

He sat down on his bed and started wrestling his trainers off his feet. “So, whaddaya think of AVM so far?”

Alex lay back in his bed. Apparently, he wasn’t going to get to sleep anytime soon. “There’s a lot to get used to.”

“Yeah.” There was the sound of Thomas unzipping his pants. “It’s gonna be weird when it snows. I barely got any down in L.A.”

“A lot warmer down there.” Alex paused. “Oh yeah, did Larry mention that skirmish squad thing to you?”

“No. What about it?”

“He’s got some idea about rounding up a bunch of us and putting together his own mini-Avengers squad – Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and all that.”

“And he wants me to be his Ant-Man?”

“Or whatever he’s called. But yeah, he invited both of us. Are you interested?”

“Sounds like it could be fun.” Thomas stood and went back to the door. “Mind if I turn out the lights?”

“They were off when you came in, weren’t they?”

“Just askin’.” He snapped the switch and then there was a loud thump as he apparently dove right across the room to land back on his bed. “Hey, you think we should invite the girls over for the next party? That Nina girl seemed pretty interested in you.”

“I think she was more hoping she’d met another black girl.”

“No offense, but unless you cut that hair, you could probably put on a skirt and walk right into Kingsley and no one would bat an eyelid.”

“…I get the impression their dorm parents might notice I’m not one of their students. There are only a hundred of them, or about that.”

“No, you see, you could say you were over at Coronado. And they’d be all sympathetic and shit.”  
“I’d be up shit creek is what I’d be. And cutting my hair doesn’t work. It grows back so I’m stuck with it this long.”

“Well, you could cut it every day.”

“More like every hour. For some reason it just grows back out to this length.” Alex rolled over. “You can practically see it. Besides, if I cut it off, it might interfere with my samson-like strength.”

“Funny.” Thomas paused. “Does it actually affect your teleporting?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’d be a hell of a weakness. Superman has to worry about kryptonite and you’d have to worry about anyone with scissors.”

Alex didn’t dignify that with a response.

Thomas shifted around in his bed. “Does Larry have a name?”

“Yes. It’s Larry.”

“I mean, for this squad idea.”

“He didn’t mention one.”

“We have to have a cool name. Something the chicks like.”

“Well, if you think of one, tell him in the morning.” As in ‘not now’. Can’t you go to sleep?

Fortunately, Thomas didn’t say anything else and after a few minutes, Alex heard him start to snore. Still, it wasn’t too bad and he was able to close his own eyes.

* * *

Morning came, as it so often did. Even though they were in a west-facing room, the sunlight began to creep around the curtains and Alex fumbled around on the bedside table for his phone. Almost 7am. Breakfast would be served in about half an hour so it might be a decent time to grab a shower and get dressed.

Kicking out from under his duvet, Alex put his foot down and tried to stand, only to realise too late that his foot wasn’t on the carpet.

“Ow,” he cried out as whatever it was skidded away and dropped him tailbone first on the edge of the bed. He followed that up with several expletives.

“What the hell’s the matter?” Thomas asked, sitting up. “It’s too fucking early to be making a racket.” That sentiment didn’t stop him from raising his voice, Alex noted. “And put some clothes on. I don’t want to have to see your wiener.”

Alex rubbed himself, looking at what had caused his fall. “I tripped over your bag,” he explained. “Why’d you kick it over here last night.”

“I dunno. I was tired man. And what’d you do, fall out of your shorts? Put that shit away.”

There was a knock on the door. “Keep it down, both of you.” Hobbit’s voice was just loud enough to be heard through the door.

“Sorry,” Alex grumbled. He went to the wardrobe and grabbed his dressing gown, wrapping it around himself.

“Thank you!” Thomas buried his head under his pillow. “Now I just have to repress the memory.”

Alex shook his head and picked out some fresh clothes. He wasn’t coming back to get dressed if he was going to have to deal with this sort of drama.

Outside the door – opening it and closing it got more whining from the direction of Thomas’ bed – he found Doug waiting, wearing a hoody and baggy shorts.

The junior gave him a look up and down, pausing a moment at Alex’s bare legs. “You probably want to wear more than that going to the bathroom,” he advised in a low voice. “I don’t know how you do it at home, but it’ll still be a little chilly in the halls soon, and your roomie isn’t the only one not used to seeing other men in their altogether.”

“I can’t sleep wearing anything.”

“Then get dressed in bed,” Doug suggested reasonably. “Just hang something on a bedpost or something. It’s not worth the argument. Oh, and slippers or sandals in case someone left a pin or something on the floor. It’s happened before.”

“Right.” Alex looked down at Doug’s bare feet.

Hobbit shrugged. “I have pretty tough feet, but do as I say not as I do, okay?”

“Okay.”  
“’ppreciated,” Doug said and yawned. “I’m going back to bed. Try to keep it down.”

“You’re not going for breakfast?”

The junior shrugged. “I’ve got at least an hour before I have to decide that. And I’ve got a baggie from last night. It’s not like I have to see a counsellor today, unlike you lot.”

“What about the others?”

“Mr. Revere said he’d wake them all up in time.”

Alex frowned. “Thomas said something about him telling them it was okay to stay up late last night.”

Doug raised an eyebrow. “I doubt those were his exact words.”

“I wasn’t there, but something about if they’re that stupid it’s on them.”

“Now that sounds more like him. He’ll probably give them a wake-up call at the last possible moment.” Hobbit opened the door to his room. “Get your shower or whatever, Alex. It might be your best shot at not having to fight over them.”

Alex found his locker and made a mental note to keep basic clothes there. Fresh socks and underwear at least, that way he could just put on the previous day’s clothes to get across from room 233 without scandalising the other boys.

Even at this hour there was plenty of hot water, so he took the time to wash his hair and sat on the bench, using the one hair drier. At a guess, that would be in demand over the winter. As cold as it was supposed to get, running around with wet hair would be miserable.

Satisfied, he pulled on his clean clothes and went to the end of the hall, pausing outside 236. Should he see if Danny wanted to go for breakfast? There wasn’t any sound from behind the door, so he decided against knocking. If they weren’t awake, there was no point waking Danny and Pavel, he decided and went down the stairs. It was convenient being on the same wing that had the tunnel, he thought. I bet we get a fair bit of traffic in the mornings once the dorm fills up.

Once he was past the door to the tunnel, it was wider and lights lit up ahead of him, triggered by motion sensors at a guess. There was a door for Drake Hall and a turning marked as leading to Galeano, Brule and the Sports Hall, but he continued until he got to the door marked as Quesada Hall. Sure enough, a stairwell led right up into one of the atriums he’d visited the day before.

The dining hall was sparsely occupied but even this few people felt busy after the deserted tunnel and still sleeping Ocampo Dorm. Alex filled his plate with scrambled eggs, bacon and sausages, then grabbed a bowl of cereal. It wasn’t like home, but if this was normal for breakfasts then he wasn’t going to starve. He might actually need the Phys Ed class to work all of this off.

“Alex!” A girl waved from one table and he walked over, recognising Sarah and one of the Asian girls from the bus… the one who hadn’t bleached her hair. Kim… no, Kimberly.

“Hi.”

“Morning,” Sarah said chirpily. “I thought more people would be up.”

“There was a party that went on longer than it probably should have,” Alex told her.

“Our dorm tyrant cut us off at eleven,” Kimberly said, spooning up more cereal. “Are you going to eat all of that?” she added, before shoving the spoon into her mouth, pointing at Alex’s plate.

“That’s the plan. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, after all.” He started with the bacon and eggs, since he didn’t want it to go cold while he ate his cereal. After the first bite he spotted a pepper grinder on the table and added some to the eggs.

“That’s what I said,” Sarah agreed. “A good run to work up an appetite and then a good breakfast to fuel up for the rest of the day.”

“I hate both of you,” Kimberly moaned, although she was smiling. “You both got that damn mutant metabolism, didn’t you?”

They both nodded.

“I didn’t. I’d blow up like a balloon if I ate like that.”

“It’s not that much,” Alex said, cutting open one of his sausages. “And with Phys Ed we’ll probably be doing more exercise than I’m used to.”

“How much is normal for you?”

“Back home, one full class and one half-class a week.”

Sarah blinked. “That’s it?”

“How long is a half-class?” asked Kimberly.

“Thirty-five minutes.”

“What did you do the other days at that time?” asked Sarah.

“I… don’t follow. Classes, what else would we do?”

“Assuming a full class was seventy minutes, how many were there in a day?”

“Four,” he answered. “Two before lunch and two after.”

Kimberly nodded. “…oh, I get it. It’s like Hogwarts, you didn’t have the same schedule every day.”

“Yeah. How else would we get all the classes in?”

Sarah smirked. “You’re used to taking every class every week, aren’t you?”

“…yes?”

“Alex, unless AVM is completely different from the rest of the US, we’re on the semester system. Not so many different classes but you’re supposed to get all the way to the end of the semester and then you’re done with those classes, even if there’s a different class for the subject that you need to take later.”

“How are you supposed to remember everything at the end of two years if you might not have touched on it in a year and a half?” he asked, feeling a distinct sense of doom.

“You take the exams at the end of the semester. Why?”

“Because I’ve got to take GCSEs at the end of the next year. If that covers stuff from this semester, I’m going to have forgotten half of it.”

Kimberly scraped the bottom of her bowl and gave it a betrayed look before reaching over to pat his hand. “Talk to your counsellor about it. I’m sure you’re not the first English student so they probably have something set up for it.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Conversation shifted to what the two girls thought of the school. Sarah was from New Hampshire, which was almost as far north, but Kimberly’s experience was entirely from California. “It feels like I’m a million miles from home,” she said. “If I hadn’t called home, I think I’d have been really homesick last night.”

“You’d have been fine,” Sarah assured her. “Anyway, you’re settling in now.”

“Well, I guess. Who are you rooming with?” she added to Alex. “We’re together – we got luck and we’re in the same wing of the Dorm that the tunnel connecting it to the school is, so we can use that if it snows us in.”

“I tried that this morning and it’s pretty straightforward,” he revealed. “And I’m with Thomas.”

“The big guy from the bus?”

“Yeah. He decided to sleep in.” Alex looked around the dining hall. “I don’t think he’s the only one.”

“Slugabeds.” Sarah sounded disapproving. “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a girl healthy, wealthy and wise. That’s my motto.”

Kimberly rolled her eyes. “That’s why you dragged us out jogging?”

“It helps with the healthy. Victory agreed, she says she’d have started today but she has to stay at the dorm to make sure everyone gets up in time for breakfast.”

“And why would you need the tunnel anyway?” Kimberly asked. “You can teleport, can’t you?”  
“That doesn’t mean I teleport everywhere.” Stepping through the other world wouldn’t exactly save a lot of time compared to crossing the hall but at least he could avoid opening the door and maybe waking Thomas, something to think about. “So, you know what I do, what powers do you have?”

“I create a white sticky substance,” Kimberly told him, then narrowed her eyes. “Zip it, Mister.”

“If you’re going to phrase it like that, it’s really hard.”

“I said zip it. I need more coffee.” She stared at the empty mug next to her cereal as if she was expecting it to magically refill itself. “More like super-glue. I practically welded two cars together when I was trying to learn how to control it. That wasn’t fun to explain.”

“How do you get rid of it?”

“It dissolves after a while. Which is a good thing, because it’s hard to cut and washing it off is practically impossible. Fortunately, I can control whether it sticks to me. Mostly,” she added the last word reluctantly.

“How about you?” Alex asked Sarah.

“I never miss a shot with a bow.”

“…and?”

“No, you don’t understand. I. Never. Miss. As long as I can fire an arrow far enough, I will hit whatever I’m aiming for, even if it moves,” she said smugly. “It might apply to other things, I’m not sure yet. Anyway, that case yesterday was my newest bow. I should be able to get better than four hundred yards with it.”

“And never miss?” Alex rubbed his jaw. “Can you miss intentionally?”

“Only by aiming for something other than what I’m shooting at.” Sarah lowered her voice. “If I pass all my classes, the Scarlet Archer has made a tentative offer to pass his legacy on to me.”

“Wow.” Alex was impressed. That was pretty big news. The Scarlet Archer was a solid B-tier superhero, he had comics about his exploits even over in the UK, although they were probably heavily fictionalised for legal reasons. The sort of guy who might go after people like Black Paladin. “I’ve only ever met one superhero.”

“Who did you meet?” asked Sarah.

“Triumph did part of my powers testing.”

“Isn’t he, like Major Victory Junior?”

“More importantly, did you just say ‘like’?” Sarah poked Kimberly in the shoulder. “I know you’re from California; but keep it under control.”

“Sorry, it just slipped out. But isn’t Triumph basically the legacy for whoever is lined up to take over from Major Victory when the current guy retires or, you know.”

“It’s never been officially confirmed, but yeah, it’s pretty much understood at this point. Although one time it was a woman and there was a pretty blatant replacement of Lady Victoria at the same time, so…”

“Girl power!” Kimberly declared, raising one fist.

“I’ve no idea what that’s in reference to, but I’ll agree anyway,” Nina said, walking up behind and tapping her hand against her.

“That one Major Victory who was a woman.”

“…why?”

“Because Alex met Triumph,” Sarah explained. “The conversation sort of meandered.”

“Right. Weren’t you going to wait for me for breakfast?”

“Well we tried waking you, but someone threw their shoe at me when I knocked on your door. And since Mary was still snoring…”

Nina nodded slowly. “That’d explain why I had trouble finding one of my sneakers. Okay.” She sat down next to Alex. “Are you the only guy here?”

“Not quite.” There were a few scattered around the room, some having arrived as he ate. “But the party last night ran on late. Later than it should have, I think.”

“Idiots.” Nina had a bowl of porridge, heavily supplemented with some kind of syrup. “But speaking of parties, guys can come over to the one the dorm is throwing tomorrow. Do you want to come over?”

“As long as Thomas isn’t doing the music.”

“Why?” she asked.

“What’s that music that’s not so much singing as a non-legal admission of all the laws you’ve broken or want people to think that you might have broken, because it’s cool?”

“Rap?” At his nod, she groaned. “I hate that stuff.”

“We had really good music,” Kimberly said.

“If you like bubblegum.”

“You were dancing to it, Sarah!”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it, I was just warning Alex. I don’t know what he likes.”

“As long as it’s not rap,” Alex said, “I am prepared to give bubblegum a try. The music, that is. I can’t stand gum.”

“Don’t worry, no one’s seriously blown gum since the 1980s,” Nina assured him.

“Judging by Hollywood, that’s probably a sign it’s about to make a come-back.”

“…I wish I could argue against that, but She-ra has a new season this year.”

Kimberly blinked. “What’s wrong with She-ra?”

Alex rubbed his chin. “I wouldn’t say wrong exactly, but you know it’s a remake of a spin-off from an 80s cartoon about a body-builder who was actually a prince in disguise.” Sarah and Nina didn’t do a very good job of hiding their giggles as he described He-Man to a wide-eyed Kimberly in technically accurate but very misleading detail.

* * *

The counsellor’s office was on the first floor of Quesada Hall… no, the second floor, Alex reminded himself. There was a couch outside that was far too low and soft to be really comfortable, and he parked himself on it and dug out his kindle as he waited for his appointment.

Two minutes before the start time, a broad-shouldered man in an expensive looking shirt and polo-necked sweater arrived, keys in hand. “You must be Alec,” he greeted Alex. “I’m Mr. Benson. I’ll be with you in just a moment.”

“Sure.” He watched the man unlock the office and then, since Mr. Benson had closed the door behind him, went back to the book.

Squarely on the time the appointment was due to start, he saved his place and closed the kindle down. It was another minute before Mr. Benson opened the door again though. “Please come in, Alec. How are you liking AVM so far?”

“The food’s decent. I’m not sure about having a roommate though.”

“I promise you’ll get used to it.”

Alex gave him a dubious look. “Do you have a roommate?”

“Not in that sense, at least at the moment. I did when I was in college though.” Mr. Benson sat behind a desk in the office. It wasn’t a huge room and other than a couple of books on the windowsill, set very visible to show that they’d been written by ‘E. Benson’, the only things that didn’t seem decorative were the chairs, the desk and the laptop set up on the desk.

“Please sit down, Alec. It’s okay for me to call you that?”

“Alex.”

Mr. Benson nodded slowly. “Alex. I’d prefer to let you call me Edward, but there’s a code of conduct and we have to keep to some level of formality.” He gave Alex a conspiratorial wink. “I understand having a roommate is a bit of an adjustment, and it might be that the issue isn’t having one but just that the boy you’re with at the moment isn’t a good fit with you. Give it a few days, just to the end of the week and if you’re still not comfortable we can see if anyone else in Ocampo is having issues and maybe do some switching around.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s okay, Alex. It’s the first day, this is why we ask Freshmen to arrive before the other students.” He typed on the laptop, presumably a note about the roommate concerns. “Are there any other issues with the dorm?”

Alex considered mentioning the party and decided to hold off on raising his awkwardness there. “I think that some of the guys stayed up longer than they should have.”

“I imagine your dorm parents will deal with that. As I recall, Mr. Revere is very much a fan of making sure that the consequences of mistakes are recognised.” Mr. Benson gave Alex a thoughtful look. “You don’t count yourself among them.”

“I was tired, so I went to bed.”

“That’s smart of you. Now that you’re away from home, you’re going to have an opportunity to find your own limits on that sort of thing. It can be a bit of an adjustment, but better to get a start on it now than to have everything hit you at once when you’re at college. The transition from being someone’s child to being treated like a responsible adult can be a bit of a steep learning curve.”

Alex refrained from rolling his eyes at the patronizing tone and shrugged. “When do I learn about classes, sir?”

“There’s no need to call me, sir. Mr. Benson is more than polite enough.” He leant back in his chair and studied Alex. “Final decisions will wait on you taking placement tests, but is there something you’d like to ask about right now?”

“Not a specific class, but I was talking to some of the girls over breakfast.” Alex saw a knowing look in Mr. Benson’s eyes and frowned. “They said that classes would be the same every day?”

“Largely, yes. The idea is that each semester you focus on a few subjects, so you can really sink your teeth into them. I know that that’s not exactly how things work in the UK, but as I understand it, this year you’d have been cutting your number of classes down to just those you intend to take GCSEs in?”

Alex nodded. “Yes, sciences, English, maths, some electives.”

“And you will be taking GCSEs at the end of the next year. But it’s not as different as you might think. For example, in two years you’ll have been taking Math for two years, because the State of Minnesota requirements are that you need to take three credits… that’s a year’s worth of maths for each credit, and we try to front-load that. During the summer semester, you and the other international students will do a quick brush-up course that refreshes you and covers any minor subjects that you might be expected to have covered for GCSEs that aren’t on your existing coursework – if any. It’s the same for English since that requires four credits. Wherever possible, anything that you’d have been expected to do towards non-exam requirements will be worked into your regular homework assignments and the like.”

“How does the summer semester work?” Alex asked.

Mr. Benson dragged his finger on the mousepad of his laptop and tapped it. “Perhaps it’s easiest to show you.” He turned the screen around. “AVM has two regular semesters that everyone attends for – that’s Fall, which starts now and runs through until just before Christmas, and Spring which starts in January and runs through to the end of April… shortly after Easter this year. Then the Summer Semester fills in the rest of the school year, depending on when students are actually enrolled for. Most US citizens only attend in May, whereas you’ll probably be attending until the end of July. A few students attend through the entire Summer, although that’s mostly medical cases or those who don’t really have anywhere to go and prefer summer school.”

“So, if I’ll be doing GCSEs next year in the Summer Semester, what’ll happen this year?”

“Generally speaking, it’s a chance to take shorter optional classes. A lot of the more… specialised classes for mutants are fitted in there, with four-week courses. They count as extra credit towards your graduation or towards college courses.”

“College or university?”

Mr. Benson’s forehead furrowed. “I’m not quite sure what you mean, Alex.”

“They’re rather different things, at least in the UK.”

“I think we use the terms a little more loosely, Alex. Most universities accept US college credits, unless they for some reason have a policy of not doing so. If you’d like me to, I can get some examples for you.”

Alex considered and then shook his head. “It probably doesn’t matter right now.”

“Let me know if you’d like me to look into it later, then.” Mr. Benson turned the laptop around again. “There is one decision you could start thinking about now. Regardless of how you do in the placement tests, every student needs to do a half-credit course on Health Ed which is fairly important for mutants, so we encourage all students to take that in their Freshman year. However, there’s also a Civics course tailored to foreign students to help them to settle into the United States culture, all those little details that you’re likely to not notice until you’re actually living here. I’d strongly suggest that you take one or both of those this semester.”

“Do I have to decide now?” asked Alex.

“No, not at all. We can make a decision once we have an idea what your options are for other courses, but at least you can consider it now.”

“What options am I likely to have?”

“There’s room in the day for seven classes and then lunch,” Mr. Benson explained. “Three classes before lunch, then three following Physical Education, which is right after lunch for you. This may have been mentioned but while the State of Minnesota strictly only requires a single semester of Phys Ed, given the nature of our student body, we have a school requirement of eight semesters, that is four credits, for all students who don’t have a medical reason not to participate.”

“How many credits do I actually need?” This was nothing like his previous experience.

“The minimum graduation requirement is twenty-one and a half at the moment. Of that, four in English, three in Math, three in the Sciences and three and a half in Social sciences. A full schedule at AVM is twenty-eight credits, based on seven classes over four years, plus anything in summer school. If you struggle, we can look at dropping you to six courses a day, but the vast majority our students can manage a full day.”

“I’d like to think I’m fairly bright,” Alex said slowly, “Although I might be a small fish in a large pond now.”

“Some students are brighter than others, and for mutants that can be a bit more of range than usual. Please don’t be intimidated if you find that there are some students working on courses that are far more advanced than those you’re expecting to find in a high school. Our goal – the school’s – is to put together a course load for you that complies with all the legal requirements here and at home for you, but also that challenges you to the point that you’re getting the most out of your time here.”

“Right…” He tried to sort that out in his head for a moment, Mr. Benson letting him think without interruption. “So, I’m guessing I’ll need Maths, English, Science and Social Sciences? Um, no other languages?”

“That’s optional, although I gather it’s expected for English schools. Given how we want to frontload certain courses, we’re generally flexible on languages. If necessary, you can push that back and take the GCSE exams for that in your Junior or Senior year rather than next year, although that would make it very difficult for you to then take that language as an A-level.”

He checked something on the computer. “GCSE requirements are essentially around about two semesters of a language here in the States, plus some catch-up in the summer. So, depending on how you do in the placements, you could take German or French for both semesters in your Sophomore yea and take the exams at the end of the year. Or start a new language completely.”

Alex shrugged. “I’ll think about it. I’m not sure, I’d be rusty.”

“It’s entirely fair. Civics would cover your social sciences requirement for this semester, or we can let it pass this time. It is possible to stack multiple science or English courses to get through those requirements before your senior year, although Math is a little different due to the way that the courses build off each other.”

“What if, and I’m not really expecting this, I do well enough in a placement test for a subject that I’ve basically covered everything up to what I’d be expected to do up to, um, Senior classes? Would I test out of the requirement?”

Mr. Benson’ lips twitched lightly. “As you say, that’s not very likely Alex, but it could happen and it’s actually not at all unusual to have students reach the junior year and have covered that level of material. In those cases, we would put them in advanced placement courses, with college level classes. Last year we had about a quarter of our graduating class go directly into their second year of college because they’d built up so much credit in advanced classes. In short, however good you are at, say Maths for example, you will still have to do three full credits while you’re with us. The only question is how advanced those credits happen to be.”

“So, no slacking off.”

“You can hardly have expected us to let you do that, Alex.”

Alex shrugged.

“Do you have any other questions?”

He shook his head.

“Okay, let’s get you into the placement tests.” Mr. Benson took out a notepad. “Can you find your way to Konscak Hall?”

“Yes. I went through there yesterday.”

“Okay, you’ll be in classroom 211, that’s upstairs on your left, not far from the middle. There’s an invigilator there who’ll get you logged into one of the computers in the room. Just work through the tests at your own pace and as you complete each test, it’ll log your results and send them to us for your placement.”

Mr. Benson paused. “It’ll likely take you until sometime tomorrow to finish, so don’t panic. You’ve plenty of time. Lunch is pretty much at your own discretion, just let the invigilator know when you’re leaving – I suggest that if you finish a module after eleven-thirty you take that as the time, but make sure you’re back in around an hour to continue.”

“So, it’s all computerised?”

“Yes, it does mean we can’t really do verbal testing for languages, but that’s acceptable. Once we have all the tests done, I’ll arrange another meeting with you, and we can sort out your exact classes and schedule then.”

“Okay.”

“We do have your grades from your previous school, Alex. They don’t translate exactly but I think you’re going to do well here,” Mr. Benson said warmly and offered his hand.

Alex shook and left the room. He found two other students on the couch, presumably waiting for their appointments. One he didn’t recognise but the other was Danny Paine.

“Hi Danny. Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Mr. Benson glanced at the two. “Robert?” The other boy stood. “Don’t take too long to get to the placements, Alex,” the counsellor warned before ushering Robert in.

“What’s he like?” asked Danny nervously.

“Seems to know what he’s talking about,” Alex said, conscious that he might be overheard. He wiggled his hand a bit to try to indicate that he was a little less positive than he sounded and hoped that Danny got the idea. “Mostly he was filling me in on how the school would be different from what I’m used to.”

“Ah. Good luck with the tests.”

“Thanks. I might see you over there. Konscak Hall, apparently.”

“I doubt they’d want us talking though,” Danny pointed out.

Alex nodded and moved on. Danny must be pretty smart with everything he’d known about lasers and so forth yesterday. Even if some of it wasn’t exactly proper science, he was probably one of those kids who was at the top of the class every time. Likely he’d be one of the ones going right to a university with half his degree under his belt before he’d even arrived.


	6. Home Is Where The Heart Is

There were more tests than Alex had expected but most of them were pretty short. Since he wasn’t required to do them in any particular order, he amused himself until lunch by picking anything that looked easy and rushing through them. There were a couple he’d been wrong about, but he was feeling good about the rest and fairly ready to get started on the tougher looking ones in the afternoon.

“Yo! Alex!” Thomas called from the lunch-line as he entered the dining hall. A few eyes turned towards him and then to the door to see who was calling out, but most of the students present seemed far more interested in their own food.

There were definitely more students though, Alex guessed that the upper three years were beginning to turn up. He walked over to the line himself and served himself from what appeared to be a ‘make your own burger’ selection. Some of the options were definitely not on his desired list, but it was easy enough to put together a couple of half pounders, one a garlic cheeseburger and the other a chicken-and-bacon. One portion of chips… fries, apparently, and he was able to catch up with his roommate.

Either Thomas had found Larry or the other boy had been out of sight, possibly standing behind Thomas. “Alex, good to see you. Thomas says he’s in, so we’re off to a good start.”

“You’re really into this squad idea.”

“Hey, why treat it like a normal school. We should take advantage of what we can do here that we’d not be able to do here.” Larry pointed up the stairs to the mezzanine level. “Let’s go eat up there. Hey, Xun, you’re with us?”

“Sure thing, Larry.” The Chinese boy looked like he’d eschewed the buns and just put a mix of the salad and meat options on his plate, which was a pretty valid approach, Alex thought. Maybe he didn’t like bread.

The four of them carried their plates up the stairs and found the tables were a bit better spaced out here.

“A bit easier to have a chat without being drowned out, up here,” Larry noted. “We should sit here more often.”

They grabbed a table looking down over the edge and chowed down. “So how are your tests?” Thomas asked. “I’m doing okay.”

Alex shrugged. “Not too bad, but I think it’ll get harder after lunch.”

“Why, isn’t it up to you what order you take them?” asked Xun.

“I did anything that looked easy first.”

“Oh.” The other boy shrugged. “I thought it was better to stick with one subject at a time.”

“It could be, depends what works for you. Moving from topic to topic helps keep me fresh. Otherwise it can get a bit boring.”

“Ah.” Xun smiled nervously. “I want to focus, but it is hard sometimes. Particularly when there is a pretty girl sitting next to me.”

“That’s your good luck I guess.”

“Good fortune in love if I can get her to talk to me, but bad fortune for the tests. I am so torn.”

Thomas grinned. “Are they letting you talk to each other?”

“No, but I was sneaky and stopped for lunch the same time she did. No one said we couldn’t take a break mid-test.” Xun bit into a boiled egg and paused while he chewed. “So, I asked her to walk to lunch here with me, but she said she was going back to Kingsley first. Maybe I made a bad impression.”

Larry considered. “Not necessarily. She might just be shy. Don’t make too much of it.”

“Okay.” He put the rest of the egg in his mouth and gave them thumbs up with both hands.

Another group of students, two boys and two girls, walked up the stairs and paused when they saw the four boys. After a moment they moved on to another table, so Alex shrugged it off. Maybe they’d wanted this table, but it didn’t seem like a big thing. “How are your tests, Larry?”

“Very much as I expected.”

Having put down his plate, one of the other students turned and walked over towards them. “Heads up,” Alex said quietly.

“Good day,” the boy greeted them a little formally. Alex didn’t want to be racist, but he guessed he was Chinese. Not that he could tell the difference from his face, but his accent seemed a little like Xun’s.

“It’s been one so far,” Larry told him. “How is yours?”

“Oh, my day is just fine.” He paused. “You are freshmen, yes?”

“That’s right,” Thomas agreed.

The boy nodded. “You may wish to sit elsewhere in future. Not that it’s a problem today, or we wouldn’t be up here ourselves…”

“I hear a ‘but’,” observed Larry. “Why is it any business of yours where we sit?”

“Well, I would personally think that you being bounced down the stairs would be very funny,” the boy said seriously. “But I try to look out for my fellow Chinese, so I would regret it happening to you.” He nodded towards Xun. “Some of the older students can be… territorial about the seating arrangements. At dinner and breakfast, sophomores and freshmen who are wise sit down. Lunch…” he shrugged. “Sometimes it is okay on days with class, when the upperclassmen eat at different times from the rest of us.”

Larry shook his head. “I think we can take care of ourselves.”

The boy took a deep breath. “Well, I was warned when I was a stupid frosh. Now I have warned a stupid frosh. Happy landings when the Euro Stars decide that you are… I believe the word is ‘dissing’ them.”

“Did you get thrown down the stairs?” Thomas asked.

The boy tilted his head slightly. “Maybe if you ask around, you will find out, as well as why crossing the Euro Stars is not a clever thing to do. But I have said my piece and my meal is waiting for me.”

He turned and left, leaving them looking after him.

“Well that wasn’t ominous at all,” Alex said after a moment.

“Just hot air,” Larry said dismissively. “Look, there’s always a pecking order. He’s trying to put us in our place by scaring us.”

“Maybe.” Xun considered the proposition. “But he is with a very pretty girl, so he must have something going for him. Maybe better that we ask around before making what might be a mistake.” He cut a slab from his burger and took a bite. “But right now, lunch.”

“At the end of the day it’s just a table,” Alex pointed out. “The room’s full of them.”

“Yeah, so why should we give up on one that wasn’t even being used?”

“Not saying that we should, just that we don’t have our names on it any more than these… Euro Stars do.”

“I can’t believe you’re this easily rattled.”

Alex rolled his eyes and shoved some chips into his mouth, chewed and swallowed. “And I’m surprised you’re this easily riled. Assuming you’re right and he’s blowing smoke, maybe he’s hoping you’ll overreact and look like an idiot. Just ask Hobbit later and see if there’s really some sort of unspoken rule. It’s his actual job to keep us straight on that sort of thing.”

Larry paused and glanced at the others then took a deep breath. “Perhaps you’re right.”

“Let’s talk about something else,” Thomas suggested. “Do you think we can get bookings in on one of the TV rooms to make sure we’ve got the decent football matches for the rest of the season? I don’t want to be stuck with the Vikings as the headliners every time.”

“Just because we’re in Minnesota doesn’t mean everyone at the school follows them,” Larry pointed out as Xun and Alex exchanged puzzled looks.

* * *

Alex was surprised that he was able to blitz through the remaining Maths tests in fairly short order, but French bogged him down as he had expected. He was trying to remember the word for table when his phone rang.

The invigilator looked up. “Was that your phone?” she asked.

“Yes.” Alex held up his hands to show he didn’t have it out. “It’s in my pocket.” The phone rang again.

“Okay, come over here and answer it.”

He obeyed, taking the phone out. “Hello, Alex McKenzie.”

“This is Mr. Colton, from security,” a deep voice informed him. “I’d like to see you in security at your earliest convenience.”

“Uh, I’m in the middle of my placement tests, sir.”

“Let me speak to the invigilator.”

Alex held out the phone to the woman. “Mr. Colton wants to speak to you.” Was it the same Mr. Colton that had, according to Hobbit, punched a student a straight mile and through a tree? Was Alex in trouble?

She plucked it from his hand. “Tim, this is Heather McGowrie. What are you after?” She jerked her chin to Alex and pointed him back at the computer.

Skipping the question, Alex worked through three more problems before Ms. McGowrie returned his phone. “How are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m not really sure,” he admitted. “French isn’t my best subject.”

“Okay. You’re not in trouble, Mr. Colton called you, not the other way around and it’s not a disciplinary matter. Finish up this test and then head over to the security centre. You’re getting through the tests pretty well so this shouldn’t put you behind.”

Alex nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”

It took him ten more minutes to admit he’d done as much of the test as he was going to manage so he logged it as complete and shut down the computer. Ms. McGowrie didn’t look up as he left and Alex wasn’t sure what he’d have done if she’d said anything. She didn’t look as if she was out of her twenties, but she was confident enough to speak sharply to the apparently fearsome head of security. And she was rather pretty.

Rather than go through the dining hall, Alex walked down to the main road and then followed it up to the main entrance to Quesada Hall. It was colder than yesterday, not quite cold enough for him to want a proper coat, but enough to be glad of his jacket. The wind was dragging on his hair and he thought about looking for a hair tie or something in the school shop later. There should be some that weren’t for girls, right?

The security centre had a long counter separating the bulk of the room from where Alex went in and there were partitions meaning he couldn’t see further in. Two men were behind the counter, one sitting and the other looming over him.

“What are you here for?” the redhead on his feet asked in a deep voice. He was at least as large as Mr. Ross and his uniform shirt was almost straining around his shoulders.

“Uh,” Alex hesitated. “Mr. Colton sent for me?”

“…McKenzie?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought you were a boy?”

“What do you want me to do, drop my pants to prove it!?” Alex snapped and then flushed as he realised what he’d said.

To his relief, both men laughed. “Ah, no. I’ll pass on that,” the redhead said. His voice did sound familiar, allowing for some distortion over the phone. “I’m Colton. Sorry to take you out of the tests, but we have a minor situation, so I’d like to get you started on your student job today.”

“Well, I don’t mind that, sir.”

Colton shook his head. “You hear that? It’s like he respects me or something,” he told the other man.

“Inexplicable, chief.”

“I’m sure it’ll wear off.” Colton walked to the end of the counter and flipped a section of it up so that he could walk around it. “Okay, kid. All I need to do is go down to Winnipeg to sort out some issues. You came in through the airport, right?”

Alex nodded.

“Great. And with what I hear about your teleporting, you can go right back there?”

“That’s right. Just the airport though.”

“But if you visited the city then you could go right there?”

He nodded.

“Great,” the redhead said again. “Okay, what sort of preparation do you need to prepare?”

“I should be able to take you now, sir.” Alex paused. “We’d need to hold hands, though.”

“I’m fairly sure we won’t catch male-cooties over that.” Colton stuck out a hand that looked at least as large as a plate. “The airport, James.”

Alex took the hand and visualised the castle. One step later and they were there, in the hall where his mostly empty bags were back under the tarpaulin.

Colton let go of his hand. “This doesn’t look like the airport.”

“It’s a bit of a halfway point.”

“Somewhere in England?” The man craned his neck back and studied the ceiling. “I don’t think there’s a place like this here in the US.”

“Some sort of other world. I called it Narnia when I was first here.” Alex tried to focus on the airport. “Do you want anywhere in particular in the airport?”

“Luggage collections would be best, if you can do that. So, should I watch out for talking lions?”  
“I haven’t seen one yet.” Alex offered his hand again and the two of them stepped directly into the luggage collection area, standing near the carousel where Sarah’s case had been… was that just yesterday? No one seemed to have been looking in their direction, Alex had aimed for the back of the room, reasoning that any arriving travellers would be looking at the carousel.

“Very efficient,” Colton said admiringly. “I can tell that you’re going to be very helpful.”

“One tries to be of service,” he replied, guessing a little snark wouldn’t get him into trouble.

Colton smacked his forehead. “Dammit. I forgot customs.”

“Sir?”

“Should have stopped at the booth on the border. It’s a pain in the ass, but technically it’s a legal requirement. Can you get us back there?”

“Booth? That place we stopped on the way to the school?”

“That’s it.”

“No problem.”

One step back to the castle, then they were out on the roadside. “Get used to this place,” Colton warned him as he opened the door. “It won’t matter going into the CONUS, but every time we go to Canada you gotta stop here and call in.”

Without closing the door he pressed a button. “Hey.”

“Good morning.”

“It’s Tim Colton, from AVM. Just heading into Winnipeg to sort some stuff out at the airport.”

“Do you have anything to declare?” a voice asked over the phone.

“No, it’s just me and a student. Alex McKenzie, you’ll probably be getting him a lot on various errands.”

“Is he a student driver?”

“No, he’s our designated gofer. Take a wave, kid.”

Alex moved into the booth and saw a screen that showed someone in what was presumably the Canadian customs uniform. “Hi?” he said uncertainly.

“Welcome back to Canada, Mr. McKenzie,” the man greeted him. “That’s fine, Mr. Colton. Have a nice day, I guess we’ll hear from you again in a few hours.”

Colton cut the call and led Alex back outside. “That’s going to be a pain,” he noted. “We’ll have to remember to come back in five hours or so to make it look as if we drove all the way to Winnipeg.”

“They don’t know that there are mutants in the school?” asked Alex.

“Either that or they politely pretend not to. No point making it obvious.” Colton held his hand out again. “Right, to the airport for real this time. Same place.”

Alex complied and Colton made his way towards an office. With nothing else to do, the boy trailed after him.

Colton greeted the airport security in a cursory fashion and then looked at a couple of girls perched on chairs in opposite corners. “What am I going to do with you two?”

“She started it,” one of the girls told him, pointing at the other girl.

“You were trying to put something in my bag!” her brunette companion accused.

“I did nothing of the kind. I just pushed it out of the way.”

“How do you two survive sharing a room?” Colton asked with a sigh. “Okay, how much trouble are they in?”

“Just get them out of the airport,” one of the security staff said in a tired voice. “And have someone throw the book at them at your school. It’s busy enough without having to clear up catfights in the off-duty store.”

The chief of security nodded. “And what were you two doing in the off-duty?”

“Checking out the perfume,” the first girl explained and the other one nodded. “The booze is better at home anyway.”

“It’d better be, since you shouldn’t be drinking at school,” Colton sighed. “Right, I’m tempted to leave this up to Mrs. Holloway, but this is the third time I’ve had to deal with you two, so I’m kicking it up to Dr. Franck.”

The girls both paled, which was most notable on the brunette since the redhead was almost as pale as Alex had used to be. “Do you have to?”

“Have to? No. But I am fed up of you two.” Colton grabbed the brunette by the shoulder. “Right, let’s get you out of here. You have your bags?”

Both girls nodded sulkily and Colton hustled them out of the office. “Kid, can you get us all out to the border?”

“From here?”

“No, we’ll go down the parking garage first.” The man pointed towards the exit. “I’ll show you a good place to start from.”

“Wait, you’re driving?” asked the redhead.

“In a manner of speaking,” Colton said.

“I don’t think I can move four of us at once. It might be best to take one at a time.”

“Works for me.”

“And if we go right to the booth…”

Colton groaned. “Yeah. Of course. Okay, I need to put more thought into that. Outside Quesada then.”

“Wait, what’s she going to do?”

“Take his hand, O’Brady.”

The redhead glared but extended one hand to Alex. “Don’t get any ideas.”

“I think I can restrain my hormones for at least another fifteen minutes,” he retorted as he accepted. “So, let’s get on with it.”

“You’d better not, I have a boyfriend. Not that I’d need his help,” she hissed.

Colton led them down to the parking garage and looked around. “This is usually fairly quiet this time of day. Do her first, kid.”

“What do you mean, do me – ow!” O’Brady yelped as Alex yanked her after him into the other world. “…what?”

“Be right back,” he said, letting go of her and stepping back to the airport.

He was promptly assaulted by the other girl. “What did you do!? Bring Fiona back!”

“That’s kind of not the point,” he said shortly. “Come on.”

It only took a moment to pull her back to the castle, where he found O’Brady looking under the tarpaulin.

“Fiona!” the other girl called out.

“Hi Pattie.” O’Brady glared at Alex. “What’s the idea leaving me here.

“I was away for maybe a minute. And leave my stuff alone.”

“What’s it worth to you?”

Alex groaned. In future, he was doing any people moving outside the castle, away from anything he was keeping here. “You know I’m coming right back here with Mr. Colton, don’t you?”

When he returned with the security chief, the tarpaulin was back in place and the two girls were peering out of the door of the hall.

“Are you okay to keep doing this, kid?” the redheaded man asked.

He considered the question for a moment. He’d not really done this many rapid back and forths before but it didn’t seem to be too much of a strain. “I think so.”

“Okay. Take Riley first,” Colton ordered.

“Don’t grab me,” the girl – Pattie Riley, it seemed – whined. She tugged her sweater sleeve down. “Hold this if you must.”

“I’m not entirely sure that I’d take you with me, I might just take the sweater,” Alex warned her. “Do you really want to risk it?”

“Pig.”

“Believe it or not, holding onto your wrist isn’t the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.” Alex took hold of her and stepped into the security centre in front of the counter. “Hi, Mr. Colton will be back in a moment.”

“Sure.” The man behind the desk looked amused. “That was quick.”

“It’s what I do.” Letting go of Pattie, he stepped back to the castle and looked at the two. “Okay, I’m guessing she goes next?”

Fiona O’Brady just extended her hand. “Fine, let’s get this over with.”

“Works for me.”

One more quick back and forth and Alex had delivered both O’Brady and Colton to the security centre. “Thanks, kid,” the big man said, patting him on the shoulder with enough force that Alex was worried about bruising. “Do you want to go grab a soda or something and then wait for me here? I’ll get these two sorted and then we can work out what happens next.”

Next for what? Alex wondered. “Sure.”

“Show the kid where the snack machines are,” Colton told the man and then hustled the girls out of the office.

The other man shook his head and then rose to pull the counter aside. “First day back and they get to see the Doctor? Not the brightest start to the year.”

“Am I allowed back here?” asked Alex before stepping through.

“If the chief says so.” The security man stepped past the partition. “The machines are up against the back wall. Just go straight there and back, okay? I can’t leave the desk to walk you around.”

Alex found the machines without any difficult, one for hot drinks, one for cold and another for snacks. He settled on a chocolate bar instead of a drink and went back to the counter, letting himself out – the counter was easy enough to open. He sank into one of the chairs against the back wall, facing towards the counter, and pulled out his kindle. He’d finished his last book on it, so checking through what else he had loaded, he opened up Nine Princes of Amber. It seemed worth a re-read and the familiarity might be welcome after the last few days.

Twenty minutes later, he was anticipating Corwin’s return to Amber when Colton pushed open the door. “No problems?” he asked the man at the counter.

“Nothing new, at least.”

“Okay then.” Colton beckoned to Alex. “Come over to my office and we’ll talk through what I have in mind.”

A corner of the security centre was partitioned off around a desk and two chairs. Someone had pinned up various Dilbert comic-strips on the partitions and there was a laptop closed up next to the phone on the desk. Colton sat down behind the desk and pulled a pen out of a jar by the phone, flicking it back and forth between his fingers rather than actually using it.

“Okay, that wasn’t what I had in mind for your first little job,” he admitted. “But sometimes the unexpected happens and at least I have a good idea now what you can do.”

“I take it you don’t want to go back to the booth right now?” Alex asked.

“No, let’s leave that until after dinner.” The man checked his watch. “Come by at 8pm, say. That should be late enough not to be suspicious.”

“I can do that.” And it might be an excuse not to spend long in another dorm party.

“I’ll try not to call you again until the weekend,” Colton told him. “You just saved me hours of driving because of those two idiots, but you need to get settled in as well. Plus, you’ve not been to most of the places I’ll want you for in the future. At the weekend I’ll set up to have someone take you around all the likely places we’ll want you to deliver people to. Angle Inlet is easy enough, but Warroad is across the lake and ideally I’d like more options for Winnipeg as well as Saint Paul-Minneapolis and Fargo-Moorhead.”  
“I’ve heard of Minneapolis, but where’s Fargo-Moorhead?”

“It’s the nearest big city after Winnipeg.” Colton opened a drawer and pulled out a map, unfolding it to show what was recognisably northern Minnesota. “Over here, on the border with North Dakota. We’ll probably need to fly you out somehow: but once you’ve been to those places, you’ll save us a lot of trouble running small errands.”

“I’m sorry it’s pretty much one person at a time.”

“Don’t be. It’s much better than the alternatives. If you were older, we might be able to just have you run things yourself but even just being able to send someone down to the post office in St. Paul will save a huge amount of bother.”

The security man leant back in his chair and thought. “I do have to stress this though. Do not – under any circumstances saving for a direct order from me or Dr. Franck – go to any of these places on your own. Not until you’re sixteen and preferably done with your sophomore year. And I’m gonna try to figure out some sort of way of handling staff requests, but for now don’t take anyone anywhere except me.”

Alex nodded. “Okay.”

“It’s not that I don’t think you’ve got a level head,” added Colton. “But I can’t make an exception to school rules for you and this isn’t something we’ve done before so it’ll take a while to figure out the issues. Oh, and no going to Canada except by using the customs place first. We don’t need another international incident.”

“Another international incident?”

“Have you read the school rules?”

“Uh, yes.”

“The part about not invading Canada again isn’t a joke,” the redhead told him seriously. “I still get paperwork about that incident and it was more than two years ago. I’d almost think they were holding a grudge.”

“Oh.” Alex was probably going to have to take another look at the rules, to see if there was anything there explaining what had happened. “Could I ask a question?”

“Sure. What’s bothering you?”

“It’s not about the job, it’s just someone mentioned the Euro Stars to me and I didn’t know what they meant. I mean, the Euro Star is the train through the Chunnel.”

Colton blinked. “Oh, them. Yeah, I can see why they might be interested. There are a bunch of, you know, ‘cliques’ among the students. The Euro Stars are a bunch of the kids from Europe that have their eye on being big name superheroes there or something. They sort of recruit out of freshmen each year, put together their own skirmish squads, all that. They’re pretty well organised and it’s a way to meet people. I think they have an RA slot this year… yeah, Danar Junior.”

“Junior. As in, he’s a Junior?”

“Heh. Yeah, works out pretty well, this year. There are two Danars, both Danish and a year apart. No relation as far as I know. They get on okay. Danar Senior – who is a senior this year at last – is pretty much the guy who runs them.” Colton paused and rubbed his jaw. “Of course, O’Brady’s also in with that lot. So that might not make you their favourite person.”

“What about Pattie Riley?

“Do you have your eye on her?”

“Just curious. They’re both Irish.”

“I’m not sure. They don’t exactly give me a members list. Could be she is, she and O’Brady roomed together last year. Their spats don’t seem to affect that. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Is there anything else you want to ask?”

Alex shrugged. “Is there anything else I should do today?”

“You can go back and do more tests today before dinner,” Colton told him. “Or… eh, it can wait until weekend but I should probably have someone walk you up to the Hospice so you can bring people directly there. I guess you didn’t visit it on the tour.”

“No, we didn’t go through that part of the quad,” he confirmed.

“Yeah. It’s just possible we might need you to fetch Dr. Franck back from somewhere if we have a medical emergency. Not that he’s the only doctor we have, but he is the boss. Actually, just walk up to the front door, would you? At least we can tick that off the list as somewhere you can drop people off.”

Alex nodded and pushed back his chair. He was halfway back to the counter when Colton stuck his head around the partition. “And don’t forget to come back at eight o’clock,” he called after him.

* * *

Alex walked up to the Hospice, getting a couple of looks from the receptionist after he stepped inside only to retreat out again, and then went to the otherworld. The great hall had a side room – some sort of chapel, his father had theorised – where he could put his bags so he shifted them there and propped the door closed. Looking out of the windows he saw rain and gave up on the idea of stepping outside. But at least the great hall was now clear for him to use for errands like this afternoon.

“Maybe I can clear one of the other rooms out and use it for studying,” he said out loud. It’d be a lot more peaceful than trying to use his dorm room and the study rooms were apparently hotly contested when there were end of semester exams to deal with.

Looking around upstairs, he identified a couple of rooms as possibilities before teleporting directly back to Ocampo dorm, popping into the corridor outside his room. No point jumping in on Thomas if he was back and getting changed or something.

“Where did you come from?” someone exclaimed from behind him.

Alex turned and saw one of the Chinese boys from lunch blinking at him. Not the one who’d come over to speak to them. “Well, my parents were very fond of each other and one thing led to another.”

“What?” the boy blinked and then apparently got it. “Ah.” He grinned ruefully. “I still have trouble with American humour.”

“It’s British humour.”

“Oh, then I am a rank beginner at that.” The boy bowed slightly. “I saw you at lunch, but we didn’t introduce ourselves. I am Hua Shoi-Ming.”

“Alex McKenzie.” He tried to copy the other boy’s bow. “Pleased to meet you.”

“If I may ask… you are a boy, correct? Are you rooming here?”

Alex nodded. “Yes to both questions.” He pointed at room 233. “I’m here.”

“Then we are neighbours!” Shoi-Ming pressed his hand against 235’s door. “I room here with my friend Xiang Ho, who you met at lunch.”

“I didn’t catch his name.”

Shoi-Ming shrugged. “He can be… abrupt. But he means well and is a good squad leader.” He reached over and indicated the room between theirs. “Our friend Chow Deng lives here, although I don’t know who he is rooming with this year.”

“It’s Hans!” called Hobbit from his room, the door of which was open.

“Hans?”

“Yah. He’s waiting at Kingsley for his girlfriend or he’d be here. She missed the bus or something.”  
Alex hesitated. “He wouldn’t be dating a redheaded Irish girl?”

“That’s her!”

“Scorpia,” Shoi-Ming agreed, nodding his head. “I hope for his sake she is alright.”

“If her name’s Fiona O’Brady, then she got to school okay.”

“Good to know.” Hobbit walked out into the hall. “You met her?”

“Yeah.” Alex wondered if he should say anything, he’d not been told not to. “Mr. Carlton had me take him to the airport to fetch her.”

“That must have been… an interesting encounter,” said Shoi-Ming diplomatically.

“You just don’t like her because she’s named for a Power Ranger villain.”

“I do not care about American copies of Japanese children’s television.”

“Whatever you say, Red Bullet Ranger.” Doug retreated back into his room.

Shoi-Ming pinched the brow of his nose. “That is not my codename,” he said defensively. “Yes, Hóng Zīdàn does translate to Red Bullet, but I am not a Power Ranger.”

Alex nodded sympathetically. “This Hans guy? Is he level-headed? Not likely to jump to conclusions just because his girlfriend starts bad-talking someone.”

“I wish I could say otherwise, but while not all pyrokinetics are hot-heads, I couldn’t use him as evidence of that. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t think his girlfriend likes me.”

“Ahh…” Shoi-Ming sighed. “Yes. It might be best if you gave him some space for a day or two then.”

Alex nodded. “I’ll make myself scarce then. Nice to meet you, Soi… sorry, how is it?”

“Shoi-Ming.”

“Shoi-Ming,” Alex managed, making a mental note of the name.

Thomas was not in their room, and to be fair to him he’d picked his bags and so forth, carefully leaving Alex’s bed and desk clear of his assorted property. Alex took a moment to plug in his phone and kindle to charge and then checked the time.

Just past five pm, so around eleven back in the UK. Three hours before he was to go back to security…

“It’s a hop…” The castle. “…a skip.” And the garden. “And a boom.” He hadn’t brought door keys with him, which now seemed like an oversight, although he could always go back and arrive in the house if…

His mother opened the door. “Alex, what are you doing here?”

“I thought it would be cheaper than giving you a phone call. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“Nothing too desperately urgent. So, the flight was alright?”

“Yes, although there was a lady in New York who made a scene about me travelling alone.”

Mrs. McKenzie stepped aside to let him into the house. “It’s not something I’m entirely comfortable with myself, although at least you always had the option of coming right home in an emergency.”

“Well…” Alex stopped in the doorway and gave her a hug before going any further. She put her arms around him and patted his back reassuringly. “It all worked out. I’m just doing the placement tests today and tomorrow.”

“And how are they going.”

“Pretty well, I think.” He let go of her. “And I did my job for the first time.”

She nodded and waved him towards the couch. “Tell me all about it.”

So, he did, the story then extending to explaining how Hans was a possible issue for him to deal with and then extending to the other boys on the corridor, as well as Thomas.

“I think Mr. Benson is right,” Mum told him after she’d heard him out. “It could just take a couple of days for you to get used to each other, but if it doesn’t work out then you could perhaps go to this Mr. Ross with your roommate. After all, if he’s a night owl and you’re not, then you’ll be waking each up and make it hard for either of you to get a good night’s sleep. For all you know, there’s a couple of other boys having a similar issue, so the sooner he knows about it, the sooner he can arrange to switch roommates.”

“Thanks. I’ll see how it goes.”

She looked at the clock. “I may as well have my lunch now, isn’t it about dinner time for you?”

“Getting closer.”

“Do you want to stay for soup?” she offered and Alex grinned.

“I was hoping that you’d offer,” he admitted.

“That really doesn’t surprise me, Alex.”

The soup was in the pan and simmering before she asked, “Were they alright giving you permission to come back to see me?”

Alex hesitated.

“Oh Alex.” His mother turned the heat down and gave him a reproving look. “What if someone’s looking for you right now?”

“I didn’t think of that.”

“And I suppose you came right here? So illegal entry to the UK.”

“Sorry Mum.”

She took a deep breath, walked around the counter and poked him lightly in the forehead. “You were a bit homesick, weren’t you?”

“A bit, yeah.”

“You’re here now, but if you really feel you have to do this again, please get permission.” Suddenly she was hugging him again, just briefly. “It’s not quite the same here without you, either,” Mum admitted.

* * *

Alex woke the next morning feeling considerably better. Whether it had been not enough sleep the night before or too much use of his power, he’d gone right to bed after taking Mr. Colton out to cover their return through Customs and dropping the man off back at Quesada.

If it was the latter, it might be that leaving the other world thousands of miles away from where he’d entered it was more effort than he’d thought. Perhaps if there was power testing he’d find out. He’d have to ask Mr. Benson if that was something that would be arranged.

In the meantime, the snoring from Thomas’ bed suggested that the other boy had managed to return and get to bed without waking Alex. It seemed fair that Alex should avoid a repeat of yesterday morning in return. According to his phone it was even earlier than yesterday, more than hour before breakfast would be available.

Squinting at the floor, he confirmed that it was clear and grabbed the bag he’d hung on the bedpost and retrieved yesterday’s underwear. Skinning into it under the covers was a bit of wiggling about, but not too much.

Now for something that it occurred to him he hadn’t tried before. Alex slipped out from the duvet and visualised the castle…

A moment later he was flailing his arms as he transitioned to the castle chamber he’d last been in, still not fully upright and absent the bed that had been supporting him. The stone floor was cold beneath his feet and the castle felt about a thousand degrees colder than it had when he was here fully dressed.

“Okay,” he muttered once he was in no further risk of ending up on his ass. “N-next step bathroom.”

Fortunately, it was only a literal step away and he barely took the time to strip again before turning the shower on at its hottest temperature and stepping under the spray.

It wasn’t until he was done shivering that Alex realised he wasn’t alone in the showers.

Through the frosted glass, he saw the occupant of the next stall turned away from him, water rushing down them.

They were narrow-waisted, with flared hips.

And although turned away, he could see a tell-tale swelling above the level of the other showerer’s ribs.

“Oh shit, did I somehow teleport into the showers in Kingsley?” Alex didn’t realise he’d spoken out loud until the person he was staring at yelped in embarrassment and rushed out of the shower. Not a particularly clever thing to do on tiles wet with soapy water, and they skidded over as far as the wall separating the showers from the rest of the bathroom.

Alex hadn’t pulled the shower curtain yet and so he got three very immediate impressions of the person he was sharing the bathroom with.

One. They did indeed have breasts, but between the legs was a very male piece of anatomy.

Second, behind that anatomy was no scrotum but instead folds of flesh that Alex suspected he’d see diagrams of when he got around to taking Health Ed.

And thirdly, the red and humiliated face of Danny Paine.

A moment later and the door slammed behind the other… boy? …and Alex was alone in the showers, water spraying down on his head.

“What?” he asked out loud.

His first instinct was to follow Danny, but that would lead to running naked into the hall. If Danny was there, that left them both talking naked in public. Not a great idea.

Or if the other boy had gone into the room he was sharing with Pavel, what would Alex do? Knock on it? Barge in if it wasn’t locked? And possibly wind up revealing what Alex had seen – what had he seen? – to Pavel, in the event that he wasn’t already aware.

So in the end he did nothing.

Well, more exactly he finished his shower and turned off Danny’s shower too. There was a stack of what he guessed were Danny’s clothes and bath bag, which it seemed best to ignore in favour of getting dressed.

This wasn’t in the prospectus, he mused. Should I try to speak to Mr Ross? Or Mr. Revere, who had only been briefly in evidence for the party but was, if Alex was remembering correctly, the dorm parent who served as the first point of contact for issues between midnight and noon. Or maybe Mr. Benson… but how to explain it?

Hell. Was there even any point in trying to tell anyone? At this time in the morning, maybe he’d not seen what he thought.

I could have been half-asleep, or maybe the shock of the hot water after being out in the cold had me seeing things, he theorised, aware that he wasn’t even convincing himself. And assuming I am right… what then? Danny would likely deny it – and if he does. I can hardly ask that he be stripped to check.

No. He closed up his locker. Best to pretend none of this ever happened, at least for now. There’s really no way I can bring it up without seeming like I’m either out of my mind or… hell, I don’t even have words. Maybe Danny’s a transsexual or something? Modern medicine can do a lot and outing someone would be…

Uh. It’s his business. Not mine.

Now I just have to convince myself of that.

* * *

Focusing on the tests served as a pretty good distraction for Alex and to his surprise he managed to finish all of them within two hours of breakfast.

“Already?” Ms. McGowrie asked when he started closing down the computer. “I’d have thought you’d be here until after lunch what with Colton dragging you off.”

“I pretty much expected that too,” Alex confessed. “But I don’t think I missed anything.”

She checked her tablet. “No, you’ve checked everything off. Well, whatever. I’ll send you a link so you can see when the freshman class options are. It’ll let you start thinking about what to take, but don’t set your heart on anything until Benson’s gone through your results. If you qualify for any sophomore classes or need remedials in something then we’ll need to fiddle around.”

“Is that common?”

McGowrie shrugged casually. “We have students from all. You aren’t all starting from the same place. Someone from darkest Florida might not have had the same opportunities as someone coming from an ivy league school somewhere.”

Alex looked around to see if he was disturbing anyone. “Uh, what do you teach, Ms. McGowrie?”

“World History,” she said promptly. “You’ll need at least one semester of it so chances are that you’ll be in my class at some point, And we might cross paths in Phys Ed.”

“Phys Ed?” Alex asked. What did those two courses have in common?

“Don’t sound so surprised,” she told him. “About half the teaching staff cover parts of Phys Ed or we couldn’t supervise you brats all doing it every day. I teach swords. Love a bit of cut and thrust.”

“Uh, fencing?”

Ms. McGowrie made a sound of amused derision. “Fencing is a sport, McKenzie. We don’t put you through that class so you can look all pretty in a formal duel. It’s not as if those are legal any more… more’s the shame.”

There was a ping from her tablet and a moment later Alex’s phone buzzed twice for text messages.

“Right, Benson’s got your results. You should have a link from me with the basic schedule options and a message from him with an appointment.”

Alex checked his phone and confirmed that this was in fact the case.

“Then what are you still doing hanging around here?” she asked. “Hanging around in class when you could be outside having fun… I don’t know what’s wrong with you brats these days. You’re making me feel like I’m a hundred years old.” She was grinning as she gestured to push him out the door.

Alex left through the back of Konscak – or was it the front since it was facing the quad? – and walked across to Brule. The signs inside guided him to the library, which was upstairs, but to his disappointment was entirely made up of test books and other academic materials. Not entirely tedious since there were history books, but as far as broadening his options for fiction he’d have to rely on the smaller libraries in Ocampo.

Out of the window he saw Coronado. Huh. Was that laid out the same way? He wouldn’t be able to take books out of the dorm but if there were two libraries per dorm, then it was reasonably likely they didn’t have the same selection of books… He could visit since they’d be on the ground floor and maybe there was provision for ‘loaning’ books between the dorm libraries. He’d never know unless he asked.

Alex was just considering how he might ask Kimberly or Sarah what was in their dorm libraries when his phone went off. He jumped guiltily, even though there was no one else there to disturb and accepted the call as quickly as he could.

“Just a moment,” he hissed. “I’m in the library.” He checked the number as he exited into the atrium he pressed it to his ear. “Sorry, Larry, I just needed step outside.”

“Which library were you in?” Larry asked. “I looked for you in both.”

“The school library… you know, Brule Hall.”

“What for?”

“I was curious. How are you doing?”

“All done with the placement tests,” Larry told him. “Listen, I have a couple more prospects for our squad, so how about getting together for lunch?”

“Sure. I haven’t seen Thomas since I left for breakfast.”

“He’s right here.”

“Thanks for not waking me, you crazy morning person,” he heard Thomas say faintly.

“Did you have to shout? I could have passed you my phone,” Larry said, obviously not to Alex.

“Okay. Meet you at Quesada?”

“Sure, ten minutes, across from Drake.” Larry cut the call before Alex could reply.

“You’re welcome,” he told the dead phone and put it away. Ten minutes? That was right when lunch started serving, had Larry and Thomas skipped breakfast if they were rushing to get lunch as early as possible?

It didn’t take ten minutes for Alex to reach Quesada Hall, all he had to do was follow the main road down across the Quad and past Konscak and Galeano. He wasn’t the only one making that trip and he was disconcerted to find himself in the company of three students who seemed to be made entirely out of stone, a squat figure of brick-red rock wearing tracksuit pants and a muscle shirt despite the cold, a seven-foot tall giant with a bovine head, including stone horns, and a granite figure with the proportions of the dwarf but almost the height of the giant.

The latter opened the door to Quesada on arrival and smirked as Alex hung back. “We don’t bite, you know.”

“Not enough calcium,” the horned giant agreed, voice gravelly.

“I’m waiting for someone.”

“Suuuuure.”  
“Hi, Alex!”

Alex looked around for the source of the voice and then though to look up. Mary was hovering in the air above them. “Am I late?”

“No, I’m just waiting for Larry and Thomas.”

“Great!” she said brightly, swooping down to land next to him. “Who are you guys?”

“Tungarak!” the horned boy declared proudly and turned to the shortest of the three.

“(Are we doing this?)” He asked sotto voice and got nods from the others. “Acantilado.”

“And I am Atoll,” the last (still holding the door) declared. “Together – with a few others who for various reasons aren’t here at the moment – we are the Ginyu Team.”

“…”

“Dammit, Atoll,” Tungarak almost doubled up with what Alex belatedly realised was laughter. “Stop doing that.”

“But it’s hilarious.”

Acantilado shook his head but there was a broad smile on his face. “I’d ask you to excuse these idiots, but I’m not going to so I can’t ask you to. They came up with this routine and insist we all join in but then they always screw it up.”

“You have to admit that it does make us less intimidating,” Atoll added. “What I was supposed to say was that we’re the Stone Men? Which is the name of our squad,” he added after a second’s hesitation.

“That’s neat!” Mary said brightly. “Do we have a name yet for our squad, Alex?”

“I don’t think so. That might be one of the reasons Larry wants to get together for lunch.” And I guess that means that Mary is one of the prospects he’s scouted. Alex hadn’t noticed before, but Mary’s skin was considerably darker than Kimberley’s. He wondered if that meant she was from a different part of Japan.

“A cool name is important,” Tungarak declared.

“Then why don’t we have one, Paulos?”

“Stone Men is cool,” he insisted.

Atoll shook his head. “Everyone knows that you ripped it off from that anime you like.”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” said Acantilado, pushing Tungarak lightly through the door. “Come on, we’re letting cold air into the dining hall. You know we’re not supposed to hold the door like this.”

“That one with the ai-yi-yi-ya song,” Atoll was saying has he followed the others inside.

Alex and Mary exchanged looks as the door closed behind the trio. “Well, they seemed nice!” Mary declared brightly.

“Hi guys, did we keep you waiting?” Thomas called as he and Larry rounded the corner of Drake.

“Not really.”

“I missed seeing you last night.” Larry gave Alex an amused nod. “Were you over at Kingsley? Some of the boys had invites.”

Alex shook his head. “Jet lag caught up with me and I sacked out right after dinner.”

“You missed a fun party then,” offered Thomas. “Are you gonna do the same tonight?”

“Hopefully not.” Alex gestured to the door. “Shall we?”

“Sure.” Larry held the door for Mary and they all walked down to the lunch line together. “Do you want to get the same table as yesterday.”

Alex glanced around at the busier hall. “Let’s stay down here today.”

“You’re not scared off, are you?”

“What are you going to do next, flap your arms like a chicken?”

Mary looked between the two of them. “What are you talking about?”

“Allegedly there’s a bunch of upperclassmen who get defensive about their favourite tables,” Larry said. “Someone was putting it about that we’d be in trouble if we sat there again.”

“Whether or not they’d be upset about the table I can’t say,” Alex began, but Mary looked around excitedly.

“Which table?”

“That one up on the edge.” Thomas pointed.

Without another word, Mary hopped up into the air and glanced around the upper level, before descending. “There’s someone there today already,” she reported.

“Seems likely it is them. And whether they claim it or not, they have it right now.”

Thomas nodded. “It’s one thing to sit there if no one’s there, but since they got in first…”

“They must have been first in through one of the other doors,” Larry noted. “Okay, but there have to be other tables free up there.”

“Sure, lots,” Mary chirped.

“So, let’s take another one.”

“Did you say there were two people you were wanting to invite?” asked Alex as they got their drinks.

Larry shrugged. “The other guy baled, so it’s the four of us for now. Another one or two people would be good though.”

No one bothered them as they carried their trays up the stairs and Larry picked out a table near the back this time. Alex glanced at yesterday’s table and saw that the occupants had actually pushed two together – there were almost a dozen students there, mostly well-dressed compared to the usual jeans, T-shirts and sweat-shirts of most of the students.

“Okay.” Larry waited until they were all seated and toyed with his fork for a moment. “Couple of things. Like I said right now, it’d be nice if we had a couple more people for the squad.”

“Oh, and we need a name,” Mary cut in.

“Yes, that’s my second point,” he agreed. “We can’t register without one. Does anyone have suggestions for either of those?”

“The Avengers,” Mary suggested.

“Unfortunately, comic books titles aren’t allowed.”

“It’d probably be taken if it was allowed,” added Alex.

Thomas nodded. “True. Okay, maybe some sort of animal?”

“Unicorns!” pronounced the one girl at the table. Mary looked around at their faces. “Oh, come on!”

“A team known as the Unicorns might not be taken very seriously,” Larry said, diplomatically not saying why.

“I think you’re on the right track, Mary.” Alex offered. “Dragons, maybe?”

“It’s taken,” Larry said promptly.

“You memorised them?”

“No.” He held up his phone. “There’s a list on the school intranet.”

“How about Wolves?” suggested Thomas. “Those are cool. We could be… Team Wolf!”

“Firstly, that sounds like an 80s movie title.”

“And it’s not cute,” added Mary.

Larry nodded. “And there are three wolf names on the squad list already, four if you count ‘Stark’ as a wolf-name. We’d not really stand out. Team something has a nice ring to it though.”

“Do you think there are wolves in the woods?” asked Thomas thoughtfully. “We are pretty far north.”

“I suppose it’s possible, but that’s not the point.”

Alex munched on his noodles and then swallowed. “The heraldry of Great Britain has a unicorn on it,” he said. “But it’s facing a lion.”

“Team Lion?” asked Larry, testing the name in his mouth. “How about it, Mary? Did you like the Lion King?”

“I love the Lion King,” she agreed.

“Thomas?”

He finished chewing on his own meal and then nodded. “Okay. So, Team Lion it is.”

“Great.” Larry started typing on the phone. “I’ll register the four of us under that name and then we can add anyone else we recruit later.”

“Yeah…” Alex nodded slowly.

“Have you met anyone, Alex?” Larry asked.

“Not that I’d want to be on a squad with,” he said. “At least, not outside the people you’d already know about. Have you considered Sarah or Kimberly?”

Larry shook his head. “I don’t think they’d be a good fit.”

“What sort of qualities are you looking for?” That sounded more diplomatic to Alex than ‘why don’t you think they’d fit’?

“Well, first of all, let’s keep it to Freshmen.”

Thomas nodded. “Makes sense. That way we can keep the same squad all the way through school.”

“I’d like more girls.”

Larry grinned at Mary. “I don’t have any objection to that, if there’s someone you have in mind, Mary? But I think it’d be best if we picked someone with strong powers. You and Thomas are powerhouses, Alex and I have a lot of mobility. What’d be nice to add to that would be someone with psi and a ranged attack.”

“I have ranged attacks!” she announced.

“You do?”

“Yep!” She looked around for a moment and then picked up the pear from beside her plate. “Look -”

There was a sudden flare of energy from her eyes and the pear started to steam, water boiling off it.

“Some sort of heat-beam?” asked Alex curiously, although he drew back a little.

Mary nodded. “That was just a little bit of power,” she added. “I can do more, but I didn’t want to make it explode.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She took a bite out of the pear. “Mmmm. This would go great with cream, I’m gonna get some.” She pushed her chair back and flew up and over the edge of the mezzanine.

Alex and Thomas stared at Larry who shrugged. “She’s really good.”

“I’m guessing she’s had a second trigger,” Thomas said flatly. “Flying and eye beams like that don’t usually come together off a single incident. Even I know that.”

“Which just means she’s more powerful than I thought. And she’s stronger than I am, which is pretty good.”

“You have precog and flight.”

Larry shook his head. “It’s all psi. And yes, I know I said we want psi, but someone with say, telepathy, would really round us out.”

“I’m not sure how common that is,” Thomas said slowly. “And it makes people really uncomfortable.”

“I’ll see if I come across any freshmen with particularly stand-out powers,” Alex said hesitantly. “But no one springs to mind. I might meet more people tonight – or in class.”

“Yeah. Have you picked out your classes yet?” Larry swiped his phone. “It looks like the main issues are what science and history choices we make in the afternoons.”

“We’ve pretty much got to take two semesters of biology and two of either physics or chemistry, the way I read it.” Thomas shrugged. “Or some mix of the last two, but there’s no need to decide right away and it looks like you might as well hold off on that until you have an idea if you want to take the more specialised classes later on.”

“I was thinking Physics I this semester.” Larry extended his phone so they could see the screen. “It’s recommended for higher level Chemistry classes and even if I don’t want to take the full load I’d like to have the option.”

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” agreed Thomas. “Are you taking Biology now?”

“No, I think my schedule’s going to be too full what with Cantonese I after Phys Ed and the other requirements. What about you, Alex?”

“It depends what the counsellor says, but Physics sounds good.” And Biology might mean dissections, which made Alex feel queasy.

“What are you talking about?” asked Mary as she flew back, a bowl of cream in one hand and two more pears in the other.

“Science classes,” Larry explained as she landed back in her seat and started cutting up the pears with her knife. “We were thinking of taking Physics, which is last period if we’re all in Physics I.”

“I’ll put myself down for that as well,” she agreed.

“And if we all take US History as well, then we’ll have three of our four afternoon classes together,” Thomas pointed out.

Alex shrugged. “It’s alright to plan but we’d have to see what the counsellors say about our results. We might not all qualify for the same classes. What with not being from the US, I might have to do other classes to qualify for US History requirements.” And he might want a break from the others at some point. It wasn’t that he disliked them but just because they were on the same squad didn’t have to mean spending as much time as humanly possible with them.


	7. Card-Carrying Mutants

One of the other things to decide was codenames and the four of them were still talking over those when Alex’s phone reminded him that he needed to go to see Mr. Benson to decide his classes. The only decision made so far was Larry, who’d decided to compliment the team name by using Leon as his codename.

“I won’t have this!” a voice shouted from the waiting room as Alex approached. “Let go of me! This is perfectly safe in responsible hands.”

“Yeah, that’s why we don’t want to have you waving it around,” someone else said and a moment later the security man who’d been manning the desk emerged from the room, carrying something long and vaguely rifle-shaped.

“Um… is it safe to go in?” Alex asked cautiously.

“What?” He looked up and saw Alex. “Give us a minute, would you?”

“I’ll show you! I’ll make a new one! And I’ll make you give it back! And you’ll be – mmmm-mmmmph!”

A moment later another member of security dragged Danny out of the room by both wrists, something that looked like a sponge shoved into the boy’s mouth and apparently stopping him from talking. He was wild-eyed and working his jaw to try to get rid of the obstruction.

“Do you need a hand?” the first man asked his comrade.

“No, I got this.” She twisted Danny, pulling him away from the doorframe where he’d tried to hook his ankles. “I… ow.” With legs free, he’d now kicked her. “Cut it out, kid, I don’t want to taze you first day.”  
The first man set the rifle - some sort of ray gun? - down and pulled some restraints out. While his back was turned, the gun seemed to shatter into several panels of light that then disintegrated, leaving nothing but a lens-studded stick in its place.

“What happened to that?” he asked Alex as he turned back a moment later, Danny’s ankles now secured together.

“It sort of… came apart,” Alex admitted. “That’s all that’s left.”

To his surprise, the man just shook his head. “These things get crazier every year. Come on, Paine,” he said, picking up the stick. “Let’s get you to the doctor and see what he makes of this. Maybe you need better meds.”

Danny kept writhing and trying to talk as the pair of security guards restrained his wrists and then frog-marched him away down the hall. Alex stared after them until they were out of sight and then looked cautiously towards Mr. Benson’s office.

The door was open and the counsellor had undone his tie and shirt collar, rubbing his neck. He looked up towards Alex and grinned weakly. “Ah, Alex, if you could just give me a moment? My last appointment… didn’t quite go as planned.”

“Okay.”  
Mr. Benson closed the door and Alex was left staring at it for a few minutes. When it opened again, the counsellor had buttoned his collar again and his tie was properly knotted. “Sorry about that, do come in.”

“Is Danny in trouble?” he asked.

“I, uh,” Mr. Benson smiled weakly. “I can’t really comment on another student, Alex. Confidentiality. I’m sure we can get him the help he needs. But we should talk about your own needs now.”

Alex nodded and tried to sit down on the chair facing the desk only for the back to come off in his hands. “I…”

“Oh.” Benson stared at it and then chuckled, “Well I didn’t expect that. Let’s just but that outside and I’ll have facilities get a replacement. We can borrow one of the chairs from outside for now.”

Such a chair was easily procured, and they took their places again. “Right, third time is the charm,” Mr. Benson said cheerily. “So, um… yes. You’ve got some good results on the placements tests. I’d be happy for you to take any of the Freshman classes…” he paused. “With two exceptions.”

“It’s French, isn’t it?” Alex groaned.

The counsellor shook his head, smile just a little smug. “I couldn’t resist, Alex. I actually have to insist that you take Sophomore classes for English and Math.”

“…really?”

“You are a little too advanced for the freshman courses. You’re not the only student who’s a little ahead, so don’t let it go to your head. Otherwise, you’re pretty much at the expected level with no problems.”

“Oh… well, thank you.”

“You’re the one that put the work in, Alex. Do keep it up.” Benson opened a programme on his laptop. “Okay, do you have a preference on Civics and Heath Ed?”

“I thought Civics would probably be most immediately useful.”

The counsellor nodded reassuringly. “You’re probably right, Alex. So, shall I put you down for the Non-US resident’s Civics course? That’s second period for this semester.”

Alex nodded. “When are the sophomore classes for Maths and English?”

“Sorting the basics out? We have morning and afternoon classes… there is more room in the morning - that’s English in the first period and Math before lunch. Or are there morning classes you want?”

“Uh… no, that’s fine. I was thinking taking Physics last period?”

“That clash with afternoon for Math so yes, and Physics is fine… You’re very easy to work with, Alex.” Mr. Benson made a show of counting up his fingers. “English, Civics, Math, Lunch, Phys Ed… And then Physics last thing. So, we’re looking to fill the sixth and seventh periods.”

“Yeah…” Alex thought about Ms. McGowrie. “Uh, I think… World History has a seventh period class…?”

Mr. Benson scrolled down. “Yes… mixed Sophomore and Freshman class there, which isn’t unusual for the social science classes. I think we have room for you… Quite a popular class but we can work you in.” He typed briefly. “Done. Now, the other main option is a language.”

Alex hesitated. “I’m not really… keen on that.”

“I can understand that, but it is actually a requirement for your GCSEs. If you don’t take a language now then it’ll need to be done next semester and then through next year.”

“At least that way I’ll be fresh when I take the exams.”

The man across the desk paused and drummed his fingers on the desk briefly. “I suppose that that’s a point. Alright. What do you have in mind instead?”

“Uh… free period. Or study hall?”

Mr. Benson steepled his fingers, his smile a little condescending. “We don’t really encourage that, Alex.”  
He sighed. “Well. Uhm… Could I see the options again?”

“Of course.” Turning around the laptop, Mr. Benson made a point of showing Alex the languages on the list before sitting back and giving him a look.

Nothing really jumped out at Alex on his first so he scrolled back up again. “Ah. Home economics.”

“Home Ec?” Mr. Benson gave him a sceptical look.

“It’s practical!” Alex offered. “I mean, I’m away from my family for the first time.”

The counsellor took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “A fair point. Let’s see where we are on places…” He turned the laptop around again. “Alright, there are places. Are you sure?”

Alex nodded firmly.

After a long moment, Mr. Benson opened the list and added Alex’s name. “Alright, Alex. It’s a valid credit. I hope you don’t regret that.”

How hard could it be? Alex thought. And he might learn something useful about clearing up more of the castle.

* * *

Girls did add something to the party, Alex conceded as he leant against the back wall of the function room and watched the dancing. Mary had brought across some of the girls, and a number of the older boys had invited girls.

He didn’t feel bad about leaving the floor himself – Hua Shoi-Ming was currently gamely attempting break-dance in response to a challenge from Thomas. Alex wasn’t sure what either of them was doing exactly counted as dancing, but he didn’t claim to be an expert and there were a dozen other students serving as a much more attentive audience.

“He seems alright,” Larry said with a nod towards the Sophomore. “Not like his roomie.”  
Alex shrugged. “Is he here too?”

“Nope.” Larry popped the p with some emphasis. “He’s over at Kingsley with his girlfriend.”

“Good for him, I guess.” The rap music was making his head hurt, but going to Kingsley might mean having a run in with Fiona O’Brady, her own boyfriend Hans (who Alex had thus far managed to avoid) and now Xiang Ho. It might not be the best idea. He drained his cup.

“Your next words are going to be: ‘I’m just going to use the gents’,” Larry said, pointing both forefingers at Alex as if they were pistols.

“I’m just going to use the gents,” he said and then blinked as what Larry was saying caught up with him. “…how?”

“Precog. It has other uses but it’s a hell of a party piece,” the other boy said and slapped his shoulder in a friendly fashion. “Catch you later.”

“Sure.” Alex made his escape and went up the stairs to the toilets on the ground floor rather than competing for the smaller basement bathroom.

It only took a few moments to finish his business – it hadn’t been very urgent, he’d mostly wanted an excuse to get away from the music for a moment. Rather than going back downstairs he went over to the north-west wing, feeling vaguely guilty about doing so even though there was absolutely no rule stopping students using any of the ground floor facilities regardless of which side of the dorm they usually resided on.

The library there was laid out very much the same way as the one below his own bedroom – well, not literally below since 233 was actually above the game room – but in the same wing. When he went to the fiction shelves he was pleased to see that the selection differed from that in the other library. Not all were to his taste but there was an entire shelf of supernatural adventures that seemed to be aimed at the ‘young adult’ age bracket, along with an assortment of other genres. On the bottom shelf he even found an almost complete set of hardback Mission Earth books by L. Ron Hubbard. They looked exactly the same as those he’d found shelved at his own local library a couple of years back. Were libraries the only ones who had bought this edition? Despite the glowing reviews printed inside the cover, he’d looked it up online and the series hadn’t actually sold all that well, with Hubbard apparently going into some kind of religious movement he’d started that Alex didn’t claim to understand or care enough about to investigate further.

Still, they were fairly amusing. Probably more interesting than going back to the party. He crouched to work one of them out of the shelf.

They had been pretty tightly packed in and he was trying to get the book free without breaking the spine when the library door opened.

“I don’t think anyone’s in here,” a girl said.

“They must have been recently or the lights wouldn’t be on.” That was a boy.

Alex winced. Now what might a boy and a girl be doing looking for somewhere alone right now? This could be awkward. “Uh, hello?” he said, standing up.

“I knew someone was in here,” another boy said smugly.

Okay, not a couple sneaking away. And now Alex felt silly. But at least he hadn’t said anything about that.

“Hi!” the first girl – there were two – greeted him. “We were just going to use the library, are we disturbing you?”

“What? Uh, no.” He hadn’t seen any of them before… or, yes, he realised as a fifth girl moved in carrying a cardboard game box. She was one of the girls that had been with Xiang Ho and Hua Shoi-Ming yesterday. “I was just looking at the books.”

“Did you know that if you open them there are words inside?” the Chinese girl asked sarcastically.

“I have noticed that, yes.” He rested his chin on the top of the shelves. “Sometimes if you get lucky the words even make sentences. Although that might be random chance.”

She blinked and then laughed. “Okay, that was a bit catty of me. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“You’re new?” one of boys asked.

“Yeah. Alex McKenzie,” he introduced himself, walking around to shake hands.

“Ah, the mysterious last freshman on our corridor,” the boy declared, clasping his hand. “I’m Jimmy Corrigan – in 231 – I saw your name on your door but we haven’t crossed paths yet.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“This is my girl, Suzy,” Jimmy continued, sliding one arm around the waist of a very pretty Asian girl. “Philip, his sister Danielle, and Chang Mei is the sharp-tongued one. Ow,” he added, as Suzy’s hand blurred.

“Aren’t you enjoying the party?” asked Danielle, solicitously.

“It’s not really my style,” Alex admitted.

Philip shook his head. “Jimmy says the same, but as soon as Suzy wants to dance, he’s there.”

“You’re just jealous,” the other boy told him. “We’re got a game, well, Mei does. Want to join us?”

“Uh… If you’re sure.” Alex wasn’t at all sure, but it’d be rude to decline without at least trying.

“It’s not a problem.” Mei put the box down on one of the tables and removed the lid. “There’s no specific number of players.” She grinned at him. “Consider it an apology for not rescuing you from Xiang Ho’s idea of a welcome yesterday.”

“I’m sure he meant well.”

“He’s sure he does too. But that doesn’t always reflect the results.” She took out some cards. “Sit down and we’ll tell you the rules.”

“Just put the basic starting cards out,” Philip told her as Alex sat down next to Mei.

“Yes, yes, I thought of that myself,” she replied. “I have taught people to play before, you know.”

Danielle smirked at her brother and took the chair between Jimmy and Alex. “It’s a deck-building game,” she explained. “Everyone starts with the same deck of cards and you use each hand to buy more cards from the centre. Some cards just give you money to buy new cards with, but others have other options. For example…” The girl took one card from the top of a small stack Mei had laid out. “This is a Militia. It gives you two money…”

“Coins,” her brother corrected her.

“I’m explaining it, shut up. “Money or coins, doesn’t matter what you call them, but it also means everyone else has to discard cards from their hand.” Danielle put the card back. “Other cards give you points and at the end of the game, the player with the most points is the winner.”

Mei sat down and started dealing cards out into six stacks. “We’ll play clockwise starting from me,” she said. “That way you can see us all play before you have to take a turn.”

“Okay,” he said slowly looking at the different stacks of cards laid out.

“The way to remember what to do is ABC,” Danielle continued.

“Action, Buy, Cards.” Suzy’s English had an exotic accent to it, very different from Mei’s. “Easy as ABC.”  
“Yes, you can play one action card, which might then let you play more cards. But always sort out actions first. Then any money cards add to any money from the action cards.” Danielle indicated each type of card. “And you can only buy one card in your turn unless your action cards let you buy more.”

“And when you’re done with that, discard any cards you haven’t used and draw a new hand of five cards from your deck,” Philip finished. “If there aren’t enough cards in your draw pile at any point, take all remaining cards, then shuffle your discard pile and then that becomes your draw pile.”

“And then,” his sister expanded, “You take any remaining cards you should have drawn form that.”

Alex nodded. “I think I get it.”

“It’ll make more sense once you’ve seen us play and done a couple of hands,” Jimmy assured him.

“Practise usually makes perfect,” he agreed, accepting the initial deck of cards Mei passed to him and fanning them out to see what he was starting with. “So… each of these is one money and then these are one point each.”

“Yep,” agreed Jimmy. “Just shuffle them and draw five to get started. He turned and whispered something to Suzy who poked him with her finger.

“You say that as if I am the most vicious player here.”

“Yeah, you’re the one who hammered us with Witches, that time last year,” Philip agreed.

The boy grinned unrepentantly. “What can I say, I like aggressive women.”

“We noticed!” his four friends chorused.

Suzy poked him again below the ribs. “And only one aggressive woman if you know what’s good for you.”

“Help, help, I’m being abused.”

“And you love it,” she hissed teasingly.

Mei cleared her throat. “Perhaps we can begin before the couple on my left start making out before the poor innocent frosh.” She laid down three cards. “I’ve no action cards so I’ll buy now.” She took one of the silver money cards. “This is worth two coins for purchases.”

Alex nodded and watched as the play went around the table. When it reached him, he had money cards so he made the same play as Mei.

“How are you liking AVM?” Danielle asked as Mei played her second hand, spending another three money for a second silver.

“Still getting used to it. I’ve never boarded before.” He frowned. “Shouldn’t she have had four money?”  
“You don’t have to spend every bit of money if you don’t want to. She probably just wanted another silver.” Danielle watched Jimmy make his play and then bought herself an action card. “Third round is where things start picking up, since some of us now have action cards we can use,” she warned.

Alex nodded and bought a second silver. “What determines when the game ends?” he asked suddenly.

Philip laughed. “Great job explaining it, Danielle.” He reached over and pointed at the points cards. “When all of this stack have been bought,” indicating the most valuable points cards. “Or any three stacks have been bought out, that’s the end of the game.”

“Ah.”

Mei smiled lazily and laid down two silvers and a copper, coming to five coin and enabling her to pick up the most expensive card any of them had so far.

“Militia,” Jimmy declared, dropping the card by the same name. Alex heard the others groan and then remembered what the card did.

“Jerk,” Suzy hissed and put two of her cards on the discard pile.

“And you love it,” he shot back.

Given she kissed him lightly, Alex thought that Jimmy might have a point. Sorting his own cards, he discarded a pair of points cards, since they didn’t do him any good until the end of the game.

“Yes, that’s probably the best thing to do,” Mei agreed, leaning over. “You learn quickly.”

“I think I’d better. I get the impression this school has a steep learning curve.”

“That’s fair. Particularly if you’re not from the US.”

“I thought it was okay,” Danielle said.

Mei shook her head. “Canada is practically the US.”

“Now that is fighting talk!” the other girl said. “Militia!”

Alex sighed and pulled two more cards from his hand.

“No!” Danielle corrected him. “You already only have three cards in your hand. You don’t need to discard.”

Mei grinned, “Nor do I.”

“Great going, Danielle,” Jimmy grumbled.

“Oh well.” She shrugged and then bought herself another action card. “Do you have your schedule yet, Alex?”

“Yeah, just this afternoon.” He bought another silver – action cards weren’t entirely clear to him but more money cards was probably good.

“What are you taking?” she asked.

“Uh… English, Civics, Maths… then after lunch there’s Phys Ed -”

“Huh, I didn’t think they had freshman English first thing,” Jimmy observed. “Or Math before lunch. You’ll be in Phys Ed with us.”

“Not me,” Philip corrected and bought a gold money card.

Danielle snorted. “Oh yes, the one lordly Junior doesn’t have to slum with us anymore.”

“Uh, I’m in sophomore English and Maths.”

“Get away!” Danielle exclaimed.

“…pardon?”

“You’re in the same class as us then. Not you, Philip. We’re all in those classes in the mornings. What are the odds?”

“About fifty-fifty,” said Suzy drily. “There are only two sophomore level classes in English and Math. You’re going to struggle with statistics, Danielle.”

Alex blinked. “Well. I guess it’s nice to meet you all early then.”

“What else are you taking?”

“Uh, after Phys Ed I have Home Economics.”

“Score! So am I!” declared Danielle.

Alex blinked. “Okay. Uh, World History.”

“With Ms. McGowrie?” asked Suzy. There was a sly look in her eyes.

“I think so.”

“I understand.” Her smile strongly suggested that the teacher was a major factor in the decision, which wasn’t false, but… “She is very charismatic. Danielle and I will both be there too.”

“Yeah, and then Physics I,” added Danielle ruefully.

“I told you that you should have taken it last year.”

“Believe it or not, Philip, I don’t have to do everything you tell me to.”

Her brother nodded sagely. “You don’t have to… but you probably should.”

Alex frowned. “Huh. What are you doing second period? Not Civics?”

“No, I’m in Bio I. And yes, yes Philip. I wouldn’t have to double sci this semester if I’d taken one of them last year.”

“Oh.” Alex played the next card. “So… that’s the only class you and I don’t have in common, Danielle.”

Jimmy began to snigger. “It’s almost like you’re a freshmen all over again.”

She put her cards down firmly and glared at him. “I’d hit you, but Suzy has exclusive Jimmy brutalising rights, so if you would.”

Suzy’s hand blurred again and Jimmy almost fell out of his chair. “Hey!” He straightened himself. “A bit much.”

“Do not tease Danielle about her new boy-toy,” she said straight-facedly.

Alex was sure his face was burning and he ducked his head.

“Don’t take them too seriously,” Mei murmured as Danielle picked up the lid of the game’s box and started swatting Jimmy with it. “It is all meant in fun.”

“It had better be,” Philip muttered and glared at Suzy. “Could you take your turn, please?”

Three hours later, when Mr. Ross pushed open the door and firmly said that it was time for the girls to go back to Kingsley, Alex thought that he might have made some friends. It made him feel a little guilty after Larry and Thomas had both gone out of their way to include him, but the five older students had given him the best evening he’d had so far at Ameriggo Vespucci Memorial.

* * *

Breakfast the next day was in the dorms as steady rain over the night meant that the dining hall was being quickly re-arranged to serve as the site of the Opening Assembly.

Alex found this out as he emerged from the bathroom (with no drama today) and found Doug Ashmore pinning it up on a notice board outside the RA’s room.

“Ah, morning Alex.”

“Hi, Hobbit.” Alex looked at the notice. “So how is breakfast handled if it’s over here?”

“Trolleys of food are being rushed through the basement tunnels to the food prep area,” the short Junior explained. “Some of the other early risers are getting the function room set up, this virtuous act meaning they get first shot at the hot breakfast products before they’ve spent too long in warming trays and start to congeal. If you want to volunteer.”

“On the one hand,” Alex said, “Ancient military wisdom says never to volunteer for anything. On the other hand, bacon… yeah, I’m convinced.”

“Bribery is the one true superpower,” Doug told him with mock-seriousness.

Downstairs, Alex found Robert Garret talking to one of the kitchen staff while a neatly dressed boy (the blazer wasn’t unreasonable, although the little five-pointed star on his lapel didn’t mean anything to Alex) about the same age had a squad of students setting up tables and chairs.

“Do you need another pair of hands?”

The boy glanced at him and did a double-take. Alex raised an eyebrow. He didn’t think he’d been that startling. “Have you been here all night?” he asked in barely accented English.

Alex shook his head slowly. “No… I was in my room… 233? I’m one of the freshmen on Doug Ashmore’s corridor.”

The other boy raised one finger - and then hesitated. “Ah. You’re the one then. Yes, help put the chairs out, please.”

“Sure.” ‘The one’? What, he was a Jet Li movie now? Or more sensibly, were the four Residential Advisors comparing notes on their respective charges? Actually, they probably did now that he thought about it.

“Good morning, Alex.” Rob was among those unpacking the chairs. He handed two off to Alex, with this more congenial greeting. “What’s Fiacho stressing about now?”

Alex accepted the chairs and set them up at the nearest table. “Fiacho?”

“Danar Nicole – the guy in a blazer. He’s one of the other RAs.” Rob laid out two more chairs and the pair of them went back to the chairs stacked on the side.

“Ah, right. The Euro Stars guy?”

Rob gave him a blank look. “The what?”

“Some support group for students from Europe. Someone told me there are two Danes, both called Danar, with them and one was a Residential Advisor here, so…”

“Oh yeah. Danar the Elder and Danar the Younger.”

“You called?” asked Danar, a touch icily.

“No, if I was calling you, I’d use your codename,” Rob told him without batting an eyelid. “One shout of Fiasco, and there you would be.”

“Fiacho,” Danar corrected him. “Fiasco was one of your countrymen and graduated last year. Somehow. So how did my name come up?”

“We were just talking about the Euro Stars.”

Danar nodded, face cold. “I would not have thought they would have been of interest to either of you. Never mind. If you can put chairs around that last table, breakfast is just arriving.”

“Sure.” Alex picked up a couple more chairs. I guess Danar the Younger is one of the continental types that doesn’t think the British are really European. Well, fair enough. There are a lot of people in the UK who feel the same way.

The ongoing debacle of if, when and how the UK would exit the European Union had been ongoing since the McKenzies had moved up to Lancashire. When a political issue was of such note that it got talked about by secondary school students in the UK without any prompting from teachers, you had to know that it had gotten wildly out of hand.

“I smell coffee!” Rob said with sudden enthusiasm and grabbed an entire stack of chairs, leaving Alex blinking. A handful of seconds later, the chairs were laid out. “All done.”

Alex looked at the chairs, then at Rob. “Just the smell of coffee makes you act like this?”

“Are you turning your nose up at the black miracle that sets our hands shaking and our pulses pounding?” Rob demanded.

“All the more for you?” he asked tentatively.

The other boy nodded. “Good point.”

A serving hatch opened between the food prep area and the function room, revealing trays of food waiting to be served. “Please form a line,” Geos directed, and Alex and Rob joined the other students who’d been re-organising the room.

“Coffeeeeee!” Steve Maxwell declared, pushing the doors open and beelining for the hatch.

The senior blocked him. “Join the line, Steve.”

“But coffee!”

Geos gave him a little push. “Even for the coffee.”

“You snooze, you lose!” Rob cat-called from next to Alex.

“You’d know,” the other freshman riposted as he walked past them to the end of the short queue.

Alex reached the head of the queue and quickly grabbed three rounds of toast, two fried eggs and a large sausage patty. There were jugs of fruit juice and he filled a large glass before making for a table where he assembled his breakfast into one egg on toast and one sausage and egg sandwich.

Rob joined him at the table, his own plate holding two bagels and a small stack of fried tomatoes and mushrooms, along with a huge black mug of coffee. “You like greasy breakfasts?” he asked.

“I’d be more convinced of the healthiness of your breakfast if it hadn’t come off the same grill,” Alex pointed out.

“Eh, at least it’s carbs and not fat.”

“Bread is full of carbohydrates. Anyway, I seem to go through calories pretty fast these days.”

“Most of us do.” They both stated eating, conversation set aside until the first hunger pangs were banished and Rob had drained most of his mug’s contents. “So, I didn’t see you at the party yesterday.”

“There was a group upstairs playing a boardgame that I got an invite for.”

“Oh, neat. What was it?”

“Something called Dominion. I hadn’t seen it before.”

Rob nodded. “It’s probably German. They do a lot of board games over there.”

“Could be. I expect the box is in games room upstairs. If you want to check.”

“I might,” Rob said in a tone that suggested he wasn’t actually all that interested. “That little jap girl was asking after you.”

“Kimberly?”

“Yeah.”

“I think she’s from California.”

“Yeah, but lots of people are from Cali. I have to be more specific.” Rob leant back. “Look, just because I’m from the south I don’t mean anything by it. There are lots of black kids where I come from and we get on just fine.”

“I never said otherwise,” Alex told him. “But Nina was bending my ear about race issues on the bus and I guess I’ve got to be a little more aware of them now.”

“There’s such a thing as being too politically correct.”

“Well I’m glad you’re around to keep me straight then.” Alex said drily. He finished his breakfast. “I’d better go see if Thomas is going to get up in time for breakfast.”

Rob nodded. “Yeah, fortunately my own roomie is fine about that sort of thing.”

“Who did you wind up with?”

“Some Russian kid. Nazar Zhu-something-or-other.” He shrugged. “His English isn’t much yet, but gotta be fair, I don’t know any Russian at all.”

Alex finished his plate and took it over to the table where used crockery and cutlery was already being stacked. From there it was a quick trot up the stairs and past Doug’s room, to get back to 233.

There was a groan from the other bed when Alex opened the door. “Dammit, Alex.”

“Sorry, but if you want any breakfast you’ll need to get it here. The Assembly’s been moved over to the dining hall.”

The response was two slurred words. The first was obscene and the second was breakfast.

“Okay.” Alex let the door swing closed again, catching it before it slammed shut and closed it gently. He’d tried. If Thomas was starving later, it was on his head not Alex.

The door at the end of the corridor opened and Daniel came out, wrapped in his usual bulky sweater, followed by Pavel. Alex paused, momentarily derailed by recollection of what he’d thought that he’d seen the previous morning and then leant forwards and rested his forehead against the cold wood of the door for a moment. Damn hormones, making him see things. “Did you hear about breakfast?”

“Da,” Pavel said in a thick accent. “Is big hall.”

“…um.”

The sharp-featured Russian grinned suddenly. “Kidding,” he said, the accent vanishing. “I saw the notice on Hobbit’s board.”

“Okay, good.” Alex backed up against the wall to let them pass. “Uh, Danny, are you okay?”

The other boy ducked his head and muttered something.

Alex raised his hands defensively. “Just checking. I saw you yesterday but you seemed a bit out of it.”

“I… I’d rather not talk about it.”

Pavel chuckled. “You threatened your counsellor with a raygun. You are a legend.”

“Well as long as you’re okay,” Alex said. “Consider the subject dropped.”

“Are you on your way to breakfast?”

“No, I just ate. I’m just going to lurk in the library until it’s time to go over to Quesada for the Assembly.”  
That got a nod from Pavel and they walked together to the main stairs where Alex parted ways from them on the ground floor.

Rather than backtrack to the east library, he went back towards the western one where he’d spent the previous evening. He was about to go in when he thought about Rob’s question and turned right into the game room. It only took a moment to find the games cupboard and Dominion had been neatly put away. Alex turned it over to check it was german and heard the cards inside all crash against the lid. “Oops.”

Taking the box over to the table he opened it carefully and realised that the inside had a tray that neatly organised all of the cards and he’d just spilled them all out of it.

With a groan he heaped the cards on the table and since he’d gone to the trouble anyway, he read the back of the box. The game did have some German awards but the company publishing it was apparently Rio Grande Games, which didn’t sound very German. Turning the box over he sat down and started sorting the cards out again.

* * *

Alex looked up sharply as a bell rang. Looking for the source he spotted a speaker up in the top corner of the library.

“All students,” a crackly voice announced from the speaker. “It is eight fifteen. The Opening Assembly will begin on the half hour. If you aren’t already in Quesada Hall, please leave now. Attendance is mandatory for any student who doesn’t have a previously approved exemption.” There was another sound of the bell, presumably to mark the end of the message.

Checking his watch, Alex confirmed the time and then finished putting the cards back and closed the box up. He was just standing to put the box away when the door to the game room opened and Mr. Ross looked in. “Did you hear the message?”

“About the assembly?” Alex asked. “Yes, I’m just putting this away.”

Mr. Ross nodded. “Good. I’ll see you there.”

Alex put the Dominion box back in the cupboard and headed for the main doors. Other students were exiting, and he saw Jimmy coming down the stairs. The older boy fell in beside him. “Man, I’m gonna have to get used to waking up at this time again.”

“This is when classes begin, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I like to sleep late in the summer.” Jimmy stretched out his arms and swung them back a bit. Alex could almost hear the sophomore’s shoulders creak. “Class schedules are a cruel tyranny.”

“Well, it could be worse.”

Jimmy nodded. “It could always get worse.”

They followed the crowd down lake-side road around Quesada Hall and to the small crowd of students still filing into the dining hall through this entrance. “For assemblies they’ll probably divide us up by dorm and by year,” Jimmy advised. “Ocampo on this side, Freshmen at the front and Seniors up on the upper level.”

“Right, thanks.”

They reached the door and two teachers were standing there, greeting each arrival. “James,” Dr. Wilder said. “sit in the second block of three rows on this side.”

Jimmy nodded.

The other teacher was something of a startling figure, even compared to the three members of the Stone Men that he’d met here yesterday. He – at least Alex assumed he was a man, since his suit was cut for a man – was apparently made entirely of diamond, his face faceted. The door-frame was visible, if distorted – through his head. “Mr. McKenzie, I believe. You’ll be sitting in the first three rows on this side.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir,” the Diamond-man said gruffly. “I work for a living.”

“It’s a term of respect, John,” Dr. Wilder told him as the two boys passed by them.

Inside, Alex saw that the tables had been removed and the seats laid out in three blocks – two large blocks about ten seats wide and perhaps as many deep, with one narrower one between them. Jimmy headed towards the middle of the nearest block of seats and Alex, seeing that the third row was almost full, moved along the second row to sit in front of Larry.

The other boy leant forwards. “Where’s Thomas?”

“I tried to wake him earlier and he wasn’t having any of it.”

“You couldn’t have gone back for him after the announcement?” asked Larry.

“Mr. Ross was pretty much on my heels,” Alex explained. Although for all he knew, the dorm parent would have been fine with him going to fetch Thomas if he’d asked.

Larry sat back. “But how could you leave a squad-mate behind?”

“Larry, you left us both behind. You got here first.”

“Whoa, it’s just a joke.” Larry sat back. “How long do you think that this will go on?”

Alex relaxed a little. “I expect that they need to get this place set up for lunch in a couple of hours.”

“Good point.”

The seats were filling up around them. Pavel took the last seat in the second row and Alex saw Danny sit nervously in the seat nearest to the door. Dr. Wilder and the Diamond-man moved inside, flanking the closed doors, presumably indicating time was up.

A moment later, the door was pushed violently open and hit the Diamond-man’s quickly upraised arm. Thomas rushed into the hall, jacket flapping around him, and dived down to sit in front of Alex. The Diamond-man let the door bounce closed and seemed to stare in their direction. Dr. Wilder certainly was.

Before they could say anything, a small group of adults entered the hall through the door in the north wall. All three wore subdued suits and they stepped up to a low stage that had been set up facing the students, taking the three seats there. A moment later and Mr. Colton flew up over from the mezzanine, over the seniors and then landed squarely behind the podium. If he’d been wearing a cape and superman suit, Alex thought that he’d have totally believed it was the last son of Krypton, red hair or not.

“All rise,” Colton ordered – and there was no doubt that it was an order. The student body stood almost as one and the big man swept them with disapproving eyes before turning his head. “Dr. Franck, the students are ready.”

The oldest of the three men, his hair just beginning to thin, rose to his feet once more. “Thank you, Chief Colton.”

The chief of security yielded the podium deferentially and Dr. Franck replaced him. While by no means as imposing as the other man, his eyes were sharp and Alex got the impression he didn’t miss much. If anything. “You may be seated,” he said quietly and waited until the students had done so.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “and I use that term loosely, welcome to another year at Amerigo Vespucci Memorial High School. For those of you that are returning, I set you the goal of matching of exceeding last year’s accomplishments. For those joining us here for the first time, this is your chance to make an impression.”

He leaned forwards. “Mutants have been a factor within the human condition for more than eighty years now. Four generations have struggled with and largely failed to adapt to this challenge. We can, we must do better.”

“My hospice was the first step in providing medical care to the specific needs and requirements of mutantkind, needs not previously met. This school represents the next step: teaching you to survive and to thrive in the world you will face outside of this school. Both in how to use your powers and in how to use your other skills and capabilities, because your value – to yourself and those around you, far exceeds one mere quirk of your genetics.”

“All of you have been chosen because you have potential. Not potential as heroes or villains, although if you choose those roles the staff here will do everything in their power to prepare you for them. It is not our concern what future paths you follow, only to make sure that you have the opportunity to take those paths.”

He leant forwards. “I am aware that some of you are away from your families for the first time. Others are finding new families, in a platonic sense, at least,” he added drily. “However, there are limits on your behaviour, as there are in any course of life – even, perhaps especially, for those that fall outside the law. Learn those limits, from the school rules and from the other students around them. Because if you exceed those limits, ignorance will not be accepted as an excuse.”

“I understand that some schools’ headmasters offer an open-door policy. I do not. Except for those taking advanced biology, you are unlikely to come to my direct attention unless you have a serious problem, most likely disciplinary or medical. These are not generally enjoyable for anyone, but I will – I assure you – deal with those problems. You may rest assured though, that the men who I have chosen to handle the day-to-day issues of the school have my full confidence.”

He stepped back and returned to his seat, and as he did so, Alex let out a deep breath. There was an… intensity to Dr. Franck. Something cold, and hard – far from the generally friendly Mr. Maurice that had been his previous headmaster. But there was also an undeniable air of mastery – an impression that should you have his support that you would have very little to worry about.

The second man to take the podium was a slightly built man, looking not unlike members of England’s large Indian and Muslim communities. When he spoke, Alex realised he’d heard the man before.

“For those unaware, I am Mr. Palash Kirsaran of Amerigo Vespucci’s administration. While Dr. Franck’s weighty responsibilities preclude his being accessible on a moment’s notice, please consider me approachable on any issue outside of your classes or the school’s security. I keep office hours here in Quesada Hall from eight am to eight pm on weekdays and while I must, as you can imagine, eat and sleep, my staff man the office twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If there is anything that they are unable or unwilling to assist you with, I will make myself available. I hope that you are all worldly-wise enough to recognise that abusing this privilege will not be tolerated.”

Mr. Kirsaran paused and looked around the room with an understanding smile. “While approximately half of our students come from the United States, this means that just as many of you come from other parts of the world. In some cases, you have arrived seeking refuge from conflicts that are in the process of consuming your homes – I speak in particular, but not exclusively, to those from the African continent and from the warring states of China. You may find the customs and habits of your homelands to be uncomfortable here at AVM, and we will not enforce any laws or obligations save for those of the United States, the State of Minnesota and the County of the Lake of Woods.”

“However, if you find some or all of those practises to be of comfort then we encourage you to retain them as a part of your identity. So long as they are legal here and they do not impact those around you, they are welcome and you should feel free to approach me, or any other member of staff, if you feel this freedom is being encroached upon. The balance to this is that you may find other students behaving in ways that would not be found in your nation of birth. Please extend to your fellow students the consideration that you yourself are receiving.”

The slightly built man reached back and deliberately pulled his hair forwards, revealing that what had seemed to be collar-length hair was actually a waist-length mane that had been tucked discreetly down his shirt. With swift, practised motions he tied it back and then looked around with a slight smile. “We will enforce our rules, as any successful society does, but we will endeavour to ensure those rules are as comfortable a fit for you as we can. With that said, I would like to welcome you all to a new year at Amerigo Vespucci Memorial and introduce our next speaker, my colleague Dr. Francis Camille.”

In another quick contrast, the man who replaced Mr. Kirsaran – the third of the men who had arrived before – gave little sign of emotion. “As the deputy headmaster, together with Mr. Kirsaran and Mr. Colton, who is responsible for the school’s security, I handle the routine issues of the school and my specific duties involve your education.”

“AVM has been teaching for ten years and we maintain high standards. I have no intention of allowing those to slip. If you find something lacking in your classes, you should take it first to your teachers. If you find their response unsatisfactory, or of there is something you would like to propose, you may make an appointment through administration for a meeting with me. These meetings will be confidential, but as with Mr. Kirsaran, do not waste my time.”

“If there is a single lesson, I would like you to take away from AVM, it is that you are responsible for your own lives and wellbeing. If you face a problem, do not ignore it and hope that it will go away. Recognise it, explore your options and if you cannot resolve it yourself then seek out those who can. AVM presents unrivalled resources to you as its students to address the challenges of your lives with a safety net. I cannot stress too much, that you will be far better served in facing your problems now with our help than later, on your own. But you must take the first step in recognising the issues that you are faced with.”

“It is often customary at schools to recite an oath of allegiance or some other nationally approved behaviour to try to impose some mandated values upon you. As your teaching staff, we believe the most relevant value to pass on to you is this. If all freshmen would check your chairs, you will find a small card on the underside of the seat.”

Alex frowned and reached down between his legs. When he explored the underside of the seat, there was indeed a card there, which came easily loose in his hands.

“Stand and hold them up for inspection,” Dr. Camille ordered and then turned his gaze further back. “Display your own cards please.”

Looking back, Alex saw that each student across all three blocs was standing and showing that they held a similar card. Plastic, white, with a name printed upon it in black. His own stated simply: Ann Walsh-Scott.

“Every student at AVM carries one of these cards,” the doctor said coldly. “On graduation they are returned to the school. There are one hundred cards for each year, with a random card for each student and not all cards are issued each year. You will carry that card at all times, never let it out of your reach. Staff and students within the junior and senior classes may at any time challenge you to present it. Failure to do so has no formal consequence… but by failing to respect this custom, you will be showing that you are not one of us. That you have not accepted that you are part of our community.”

He paused and in the first show of emotion since he took the podium, lowered his eyes. “The names on those cards are of mutants between the age of fifteen and eighteen – your own ages – who died as a direct result of their mutations. In the majority of these cases they died alone and for every one of them, we - do - not - know - why. This, we cannot endure. This, we will not endure. This is why you are here.”

Dr. Franck, Mr. Kirsaran and Mr Colton rose to their feet and stood next to Dr. Camille, the headmaster on his right and the others to his left. They reached out and took each other’s hands, forming a short human chain.

“Please hold hands with those next to you,” Mr Colton requested soberly. “If you are at the end of the aisle, reach out to those in front or behind.”

Alex obeyed, taking the hands of the boys flanking him. He saw out of the corner of his eyes that while the boys at the far end of the second and third rows were gripping each other’s hands, Danny was at the end of the line. Then the Diamond-man stepped in to form the next link, extending his own hand to Dr. Wilder in turn and then another teacher took their place, extending the chair up the stairs to the mezzanine and the senior class.

“A moment of silence,” ordered Dr. Franck and the dining room stilled.

Alex felt as if he could hardly breathe lest he break the silence. He was still holding the card with the name Ann Walsh-Scott, the boy to the left holding his hand in such a way as to place the card between their hands. And the boy to his right – it was Scott, he realised suddenly, had done the same with his own card.

When the silence broke it was Dr. Franck who spoke.

“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.”

Alex realised with a shiver that the entire room had whispered those last four words with the headmaster, his own lips amongst them. He half-remembered these words from other times. A poem, near enough a hundred years old.

“But where our desires are and our hearts profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;”

Again, the last words came unbidden to Alex’s lips and he whispered them as part of a low chorus.

“As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust.

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.”

Dr. Franck allowed the silence to fill the room again for a long, painful moment after hundreds of voices had echoed him in those last eight words.

And then he released his hand from Dr. Camille’s and removed a card from his own pocket, holding it briefly to show it was much like those of the students. “What you just joined is in sharing is from a poem by a Mr. Binyan. You can, I am sure, find the full text online if you wish. Its meaning, I hope, is clear to you.”

“There are no further student functions from now until the start of classes on Monday,” he announced quietly. “Some of you may be called in for your student jobs, but for the most part this is your last chance to settle in and to obtain anything you might need that has been forgotten or was not previously thought of. I do not expect you to dwell overmuch on these cards but keep them safe and perhaps a moment or two of consideration for those named on them would not go amiss.”

And then he turned and without ceremony, left the podium and the hall behind, a straight-backed silhouette against the light outside, followed by Dr. Camille and by Mr. Kirsaran. Mr. Colton didn’t take the podium but he did turn to address the students as they released each other’s hands.

“The teachers will dismiss you, one line of seating at a time. Please remain orderly, any disruption could delay serving lunch, which I am sure none of you would want. If anyone has any issues with their classes, please make sure your counsellor is aware by the end of the day and every effort will be made to resolve the problem before Monday.”

He dipped his head slightly as if in salute and also left through the double doors, vanishing towards Konscak Hall.

Behind him, Alex took a deep breath and then glanced sideways at Steve, who looked solemn, and then back at Larry. “That was…”

“Mmm.” Larry said with a nod of his head.

“Very eloquent of you,” Thomas murmured. “Powerful. I didn’t expect it.”

“Evidently.” The Diamond-man was in front of Thomas, while Dr. Wilder had stepped past them to start dismissing the Junior class a line at a time. “Mr Russell, it would be advisable for you to attend school events promptly in future. And further to consider who may be behind doors that you open.”  
“Sorry sir, I overslept.”

“Don’t call me sir.” The man shook his head. “My name is Mr. Whitley. Or you can call me Diamond, which quite a number of people have done over the years.” (Alex had to admit that the nickname suited him.) “In future, Mr. Russell, see that you have an alarm clock. Or ask your roommate to make sure you get up in time. It’s up to you to be up in time for breakfast, for class and for occasions such as today. If you need help, then as Dr. Camille said, ask for it.”

“Yeah, okay,” Thomas muttered. “Alex…?”

“What do you want me to do? Kick you? Cold water.”

“Just make a f… racket the way you did, first morning.”

“Sure, whatever.” He’d do it after he was dressed though.

“Uh.” Danny looked up at Mr. Whitley. “Could I change my code name?”

“You’ve registered one already?” the teacher asked in surprise.

“I…” The boy studied the floor. “I had an… incident, yesterday.”

Alex got the distinct impression that Diamond’s eyebrows, if he’d had them, would have been raised. He produced a phone and checked something. “Ah. That sort of thing. We’re not very flexible on those matters, Mr. Paine. Your condition is unfortunate, but you need to learn to get it under control. Has your counsellor made an appointment for you at the hospice?”

“Yes sir.”

Mr. Whitley nodded. “You can ask Mr. Kirsaran to make an exception but it’s fairly unlikely he’ll agree. Otherwise, everyone is free to amend their codenames once a year, so you’ll have to wait until the start of your sophomore year.”

Danny’s voice was even smaller. “Yes sir.”

“What’d you choose as your codename?” asked Larry.

The other boy’s response was inaudible.

“What?”

Pavel cleared his throat. “He called himself: ‘Power Xtreme’. With a big X for the second word.”

Without a word, Danny bolted out of the door, pushing past the first sophomores to be released. Alex saw Dr. Wilder give Diamond a questioning look and the mineral-esque teacher shook his head slightly.


	8. Not All Lessons Are Classes

The next morning Alex was getting to the end of one of the Mission Earth books when his phone pinged him. The text message was from Mr. Revere, telling him that his textbooks had arrived and he could pick them up in the dorm atrium.

It seemed as if it was the sort of thing best dealt with early, so he closed the book and re-shelved it before heading out of the library and around the corner to the entrance. Rather than large stacks of books though, what was heaped on a table near to the saturnine dorm parent looked rather more like kindles.

“McKenzie,” Mr. Revere greeted him. “Your textbooks are here.”

“Just mine, sir?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The man checked a list and then lifted the top half of one pile aside, before handing the kindle this exposed over to Alex. “Paper books are too bulky and too costly to replace. This is school property and you do not have permission to load anything else onto it. If it is damaged, then the responsible student – by default you – will have a charge for replacement or repair added onto your school fees.”

Mr. Revere reached over and thumbed the screen, which lit up. “Put your left thumb on the white box.”

Seeing a box on the screen, Alex complied, and it flashed twice.

“Right, that’s coded to you now. The menu should list your classes.”

Alex found the menu and confirmed that this was correct.

“Good. Each class will have your textbooks and recommended reading loaded. As you take more classes, there will be new books.” Mr. Revere leant back against the table. “You should probably make sure your roommate knows to come and get his.”

“Okay.”

Well, it was going to be a lot easier to carry around, he had to admit. Alex headed up the stairs and went past Doug’s room as normal. The Residential Advisor poked his head out. “Did you get a message about textbooks?”

Alex held up the school’s kindle and Hobbit nodded. “I suggest plugging it in every night to charge. Teachers don’t have to let you charge it in class if the battery’s getting dry and some of them don’t. And there’s not really enough time between classes so if you forget once you might be relying on other people to let you look up references for the rest of the day.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s what I’m here for.”

At which point Alex’s phone went off again. He fumbled with the kindle and then tucked it under his arm and answered the phone. “Hello?”

“Kid, this is Mr. Colton.”

“Oh, hello.”

“Kind of short notice, but we’ve got a chance to run you over to the other two major airports and let you pick them up as destinations. Can you be outside your dorm in ten minutes with anything you need for the rest of the day? You’ll mostly be sitting around as we move you, but don’t worry about getting fed.”

Alex checked the time. “Sure.”

“Great, ten minutes then.” The call cut unceremoniously.

Hobbit cocked his head to one time. “Trouble?”

“No, my student job kicking in. I’ll probably be out all day.”

“I thought you could just teleport around.”

“Yes, but I need to know where to go.”

“Ahhh,” the older boy said in a tone that suggested that understanding had just dawned. “You’d better get on then.”

Alex opened the door to 233 only to find that Thomas wasn’t there anymore. Hopefully that meant that he’d woken and gone to breakfast un-prompted. He set up the kindle to charge and dropped his own into a satchel, checking the battery. Fully charged, fortunately. Not sure exactly where he’d be going, he added gloves and a cold weather cap to the bag before slipping on his heavier coat.

On the way out to the dorm’s main stairs, he had a sudden thought and stopped at 239, knocking on the door.

“Come in!” a voice called and he pushed it open to see Larry and Thomas both eyeing the desk where a large monitor was set up, attached to a laptop. “Alex, what’s up?”

“Did you get a text about textbooks?” he asked.

Larry picked up his phone. “Yeah. Didn’t seem urgent.”

Alex looked over at his roommate, who nodded. “Okay, just making sure. Mr. Revere’s got them stacked now so if you want to collect yours now and be done with it, good moment.”

The other two boys exchanged looks. “No,” Larry decided. “No rush, we’ll get them after the movie. Do you want to watch it with us? It’s the new Tarantino.”

Alex shook his head. “School job called,” he explained. “I’ll be tied up all day.”

“Kinky!” Thomas declared. “How’d you get a sweet job like that?”

“Er… figuratively tied up.” Alex retreated, suspecting that the others would find the reaction hilarious but not really caring.

It hadn’t taken him five minutes to get to the doors, much less then, but when he got there, he heard his name called and saw Ms. McGowrie waving from the window of a pick-up truck.

“Hello?” he asked cautiously, walking over. While the wind was cold she was wearing only a white shirt, not so thin as to give any hints as to what was under it.

“Didn’t Tim tell you to expect me? Colton, you know who I mean?”

“Oh. Ohh. Not by name, ma’am.”

“Ma’am? Is that what they call women where you come from?” She jerked her head. “Get in, would you?”  
“Okay.” He trotted around the other side of the pick-up and opened the passenger door. The cab was higher than he was used to, and wider with room for three. He couldn’t help but notice the teacher’s legs as he climbed in. She was wearing tights and a plaid skirt that ended a little above the knee. Add a tie and she could have passed for a catholic schoolgirl, or someone trying to reclaim their school days.

Ms. McGowrie didn’t wait for him to be fully strapped in before she started the truck and put it into gear. “You’ll be getting run over to the more local places tomorrow,” she told him. “But today you get the high-speed tour of some of Minnesota’s less scenic locales.”

“The… airports?”

“Exactly.” She turned sharply to go around the quad and gunned the engine rather more than Alex thought it sounded like it needed as she drove them past Brule Hall. He braced for another turn towards the exit, glad he still had his passport in his coat, but rather than turning right she went across the main road and past Coronado Dorm as well.

“Uh. Where are we going?”

“Firstly, over to Moorhead, then down to Minneapolis and back to school,” Ms. McGowrie told him as she went up past the Hospice and then turned up a low ramp into a parking area and braked sharply as the truck wound up more or less in a parking space. “Come on, out,” she added as he was apparently too slow to follow her in unbuckling.

He obeyed and climbed down again. The woman retrieved a large bag from the back of the truck and then led him across the road and onto the flat, slightly elevated concrete pad that occupied a slight rise between the Hospice and Coronado. The pad, in turn, was occupied by a helicopter with two men carrying out checks.

“Are we all good?” Ms. McGowrie asked, dropping the bag by the front of the helicopter and doing her own walk around.

The first man nodded. “She checks out perfectly as far as we can tell.”

“Always a good start.”

Alex glanced back and saw that the back of the rise had a ramp leading back into a sizeable building almost entirely hidden from the campus, behind the rise. From the large doors he guessed that it was a hangar. Wait, did this mean…

Ms. McGowrie pushed open the side-door and heaved the bag in without any obvious effort. “Come on, Alex.”

He trotted over, still started, and let her push him into a seat behind the cockpit, facing backwards. “Have you ever flown before?”

“Only to get here from home.”

“Okay. The seats are basically the same, but stay buckled up the entire flight,” she told him. “There’s not really room for moving around anyway.”

He saw that while there was another full seat facing him, the other side of the helicopter only had fold down seats and the floor was clear between them.

“That’s for stretchers if we have to carry a prone patient,” the teacher told him. “I’ve got a co-pilot for the first stretch, but you aren’t flying up front even after we drop him off in Moorhead. I don’t want a novice sitting anywhere the controls.”

“That’s fine.” He’d be petrified of knocking something by accident and causing an accident.

She grinned. “Good kid. It’s probably going to be pretty boring, but the scenery might be decent at times if you like trees.”

Alex heard footsteps and a moment later, Dr. Franck climbed into the back as well and secured a laptop case to the back wall. He gave Alex a thoughtful look and then glanced at Ms. McGowrie. “Familiarizing Mr. McKenzie with the area?”

“Yes, sir,” she responded with sudden formality.

“Very good. I may be calling on you in the future,” the doctor said calmly and climbed down again.

Ms. McGowrie handed Alex a headset. “Put this on. I’ll point out anything interesting we pass. Like the seatbelt, don’t take it off until I tell you to.”

Alex accepted the headset and put it on carefully. The teacher nodded and then plugged it into the wall before strapping her own bag down and exiting, sliding the door closing. It locked with a definite finality, probably secured to make sure he didn’t try to open it from inside. Frankly, that made him feel a little better.

A moment later, Alex heard Ms. McGowrie again, this time over the headset. “AVM Security, this is Cateran flight, taking off with crew of two and one passenger for Fargo-Moorhead.”

Colton’s voice replied, slightly distorted. “Confirmed, Cateran. Weather reports are clear. Have a safe flight.”

Above Alex, the engine came to life and he could hear the rotors moving above the surprisingly muted rumbling. Craning forwards he squinted up and saw them move faster and faster until they were nothing but a blur. The seat seemed to lurch beneath him and when he looked down, the ground was beginning to recede. He saw the forest and the corner of the lake for a moment and then the helicopter turned, giving him a brief view of the rest of the school and the lakeshore before they flew south and left both behind.

* * *

The flight was, much like Alex’s previous experience of flight, novel for the first few minutes and then tedious thereafter. The flight wasn’t all that steady, but it wasn’t quite bad enough that he couldn’t read – although he did have to stop a couple of times. He supposed the helicopter was just smaller than the jet and therefore more vulnerable to the wind. It reminded him a little of a summer holiday in Scotland when he’d spent an afternoon picking fruit on a farm, along with other kids his age. Being driven out to the fields in a trailer behind a tractor had felt a little like this.

Dr. Franck and Ms. McGowrie spoke only occasionally, and everything they said to each other seemed to be relating to the flight. It hadn’t occurred to Alex previously that school teachers would know how to fly a helicopter. Although if it was the only quick way to get to a city, he supposed there would be an obvious incentive.

The only thing Ms. McGowrie said to Alex was to point out Warroad as they flew over the southern shoreline of the lake. They didn’t fly directly over the town but Alex glanced over it, trying to fix it in his mind. Then he realised that if he tried to travel there using this mental image, he might appear high up in the sky and decided to leave it until tomorrow. Probably he’d be visiting the town by hovercraft along with everyone going to church there.

He was deep into a book when he glanced out of a window and realised that they were flying over a city rather than the forests or fields he’d seen previously. The helicopter skirted the edge of the city and eventually descended towards what looked like an airport. (It was).

There was a brief exchange between Ms. McGowrie and someone on the ground, most of which was in jargon that Alex didn’t even try to understand and then they were descending towards a line of hangers.

The helicopter touched down with only a slight bump and the engine shut down, leaving the rotors to spin slowly to a halt. No one said anything to him, so Alex closed down his kindle but waited without removing his headset or seatbelt.

After a few moments, Dr. Franck opened the side door and retrieved his case. He gave Alex a measuring look and then nodded. “I see you can take instructions, Mr. McKenzie. That is my usual prerequisite before I entrust anyone with responsibility.”

“Thank you,” Alex said uncertainly.

The doctor smiled drily. “That was a compliment. Ms. McGowrie will be with you shortly.” He stepped away and Alex stared after him. What instructions had he obeyed? Staying buckled in? That wasn’t exactly difficult.

A moment later, Ms. McGowrie’s voice came over the headset. “Okay, Alex. You can unstrap now. Leave the headset on the seat. We’ll be back in about an hour, so you can leave anything you won’t need for that long in the helo too.”

“Helo. Not chopper?”

“Only in movies.” She gave a little laugh. “Let me let you in on a little secret, Alex. Most of the time when I watch action movies, the errors bug me. I have to get by it by treating them as comedies, which has spoiled more than a few dates.”

He unbuckled and took off the headset, then climbed down, bringing his satchel with him. Ms. McGowrie was waiting for him. “Okay, we’re going to take a taxi to a couple of places it could be handy for you to get to at times, but first we’ll visit the terminal. Airports are always a good place to be able to get to. Be sure to stay near me – if you need to stop or want to look at something, let me know, but we’re not here to shop or sight-see.”

“Okay.”

“Good lad.” She favoured him with a smile and took his arm. “Come along now.”

Having seen three airports before, there was nothing that particularly stood out to Alex about Moorhead Municipal Airport’s terminal. He was beginning to get the impression that airports weren’t particularly exciting places, most of the time. Ms McGowrie glanced at the food court as they went past it. “Did you feel sick at all while we were flying?”

“No, it was fine.”

“Good. And do you have to eat right now?”

“I could eat, but I can hold on.”

She grinned. “Your resilience is noted. It’s a decent time for lunch but I figure I’ll call ahead for something we can pick up over in Moorhead and then we eat on the way back to the airport. But if you start feeling sick when we’re flying, let me know right away. Our maintenance staff have cleaned vomit out of the back before but that’s no reason to make them do that if we don’t have to.”

“Should I keep a bag on hand just in case?”

“Good thinking,” she said approvingly. “It may not come up, I’ve never been airsick in my life but everyone’s different.”

They reached the taxi-rank and Ms. McGowrie picked the first car in line, holding the back door and waving for Alex to get in. “We’re going to be making a couple of quick stops in Moorhead and Fargo,” she told the driver. “Then back here. Should take an hour or so. Do you have gas for that?”  
“No problem,” the man said. “I’m good for anywhere in the area.”

“Good.” She hopped in the back. “Our first place is Moorhead Center Mall. Just the car park.”

The driver nodded and pulled away from the curb. “Ten to fifteen minutes,” he estimated. “Depends on the traffic.”

Alex glanced around the inside of the cab. “Have you been flying long?” he asked.

Ms. McGowrie gave the back of the driver’s head a look. “Oh yes, it’s a useful skill,” she said vaguely. “That’s how I met Dr. Franck, actually. I flew patients to his previous clinic for a few years, it paid my way through a history degree.”

“Oh.” If that clinic predated the current Hospice and AVM then it meant she’d been flying for years before the school opened, so more than ten years ago. Alex mentally updated her age. Not, he thought, that it really mattered. She still looked good and since realistically looking was all he could expect, what did her actual age matter? “Does the school offer flying lessons?”

“Surely it’s my turn for a question,” Ms. McGowrie said playfully.

“Oh?” He made an inviting gesture.

“I see you’ve signed up for my World History class this semester. Are there any particular reasons?”  
“A couple.” He paused.

“Ah, I didn’t ask what they were?” She smiled slyly. “Well if I have to pry every detail out of you then I shall have to answer in kind.”

“Fair enough. It seemed like it would be an easier step from the most English history I’ve done so far than U.S. History. Also, you seemed like a reasonable teacher. And…” he hesitated. “There’s a girl I got on with pretty well with at one of the parties that’s taking the class.”

Ms. McGowrie threw her head back and laughed uninhibitedly. “That’s as good a reason as the others, but don’t expect me to cut you any slack for your courting of her.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Suuuure,” she said with no great sincerity. “So, flying. We do offer classes but under state laws you can only learn to fly powered aircraft from when you’re sixteen, and you can’t get a license until you’re seventeen. Are you thinking of learning?”

“I don’t know how much use I’d have for it, but I don’t know many schools that do offer the classes so it’s the sort of opportunity that it might be sensible to take if I have the chance.”

Ms. McGowrie nodded. “It’s the sort of skill that can turn into a career. Even if it’s not your first choice, it’s something to fall back upon. You do have to pass a regular review every couple of years, but if the requirements aren’t too steep – one reason I’m doing this trip is that I can tick off three flights and landings, which covers me for the next ninety day’s minimum flight obligations.”

The taxi had got past the junction that served the airport and took a highway into the middle of the city. “How do you feel about pizza?” Ms. McGowrie asked.

Alex shrugged. “Depends on the toppings.”

“What do you like.”

“Uh, chicken and bacon?”

“You don’t mind us eating in the back, do you?” she asked the driver with a grin.

He shrugged. “Don’t make a mess.”

“We’ll even use napkins,” she said and took out her phone. “No soda before you fly with me. A milkshake should be fine though. Chocolate?”

“Okay.”

The driver half-turned. “That’ll be fine as long as you have a lid on the drinks.”

Ms. McGowrie gave him a little wave of assurance and dialled a number, making an order for collection. Two pizzas and two milkshakes. “Okay, we’ll go pick that up after we visit the mall,” she said when she was done.

It only took them a few minutes to reach the mall. “Okay.” Ms McGowrie leaned over and handed the driver a fifty-dollar bill. “I’ll just take Alex in, we’ll be maybe five minutes, and then we want to go south. The place I ordered the food is near the U.S. Postal Service building.”

The driver accepted the money and nodded. “I’ll leave the meter running,” he warned.

“I wouldn’t expect anything else,” she told him and got out of the car.

Alex followed her and they went into the Mall.

“Alright,” she told him. “I’ll pick something up quickly to justify us being here. Do you think you could teleport here now?”

He concentrated. “I’m as sure as I can be without trying.”

“Okay.” She pointed to a sign up ahead. “Use the washroom – they’re generally nice and out of sight places where people actively avoid looking at each other, in my experience – and then we’ll get back on with our little tour.”

Alex took the opportunity to actually use the facilities and then re-joined Ms. McGowrie, who had a bag from one of the department stores. “That was quick,” he said.

She smiled smugly. “I had the bag in my pocket,” she said. “I just grabbed something from a stall. It’s a useful trick.”

The restaurant the taxi took them to next was just a few blocks away and Ms. McGowrie took Alex with her to pick up the food. Both pizzas were small, but the milkshakes were large. “I’d prefer a large,” the teacher admitted, “But it’s a little too memorable to have a woman chow down on a sixteen-inch pizza all on her own without worrying about her weight. The milkshake should help and we can eat again in Saint Paul.”

“Take us over to West Acres Shopping Center,” she directed. “But could you cut down through Island Park rather than following the main roads?”

“It’s your money,” the driver said indifferently.

“May as well enjoy the scenery.” Ms. McGowrie put her milkshake in a cup holder and opened her pizza box to start her first slice. Alex sucked down some of his own shake first, letting the pizza cool a little. He could feel the heat from it through the box.

As the taxi crossed a bridge going west, the teacher waved her pizza slice vaguely. “Welcome to Fargo, North Dakota.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Minnesota seems to have a thing for twin-cities, divided by rivers and legal boundaries. In this case the river is a boundary between states. When we get to Saint Paul-Minneapolis, it’s just a state boundary but the river is the upper Mississippi.”

They repeated their little act at a second mall, by which time most of the pizza was gone, and then Ms. McGowrie directed the driver to take them back to the airport.

“A real flying visit to the city,” he noted as he turned the car eastwards.

“Yeah, we’re flying through for other reasons so just running a couple of errands as we get the chance,” the history teacher said casually.

The fifty didn’t quite cover the cost of the taxi, but Ms. McGowrie didn’t blink at the cost. “Hiring a car would have taken longer to arrange and left more of a paper trail,” she told Alex. “And you should never rely on buses or the like if you’re in any sort of hurry. No matter how reliable it is, it’ll always let you down when you really need it.”

Once they were out of sight of the taxi-rank, the teacher removed the contents of the bags, folding up the branded bags again and putting them away for later use. What she’d bought were apparently donuts. “Calories,” she said unrepentantly and started munching her way through one on the way back to the helicopter. “I can’t eat and pilot at once so anything I don’t eat, you can finish off on the way to Saint Paul.”

Alex eyed her start another donut and decided that the chances were pretty slim he’d get many. But it was her money so who was he to complain?

* * *

The flight to what Ms. McGowrie referred to as the Twin Cities took a little longer than the previous flight but there was more conversation which made it pass faster.

“I’ve been flying for almost fifty years,” she expanded on her earlier answer. “I wanted to diversify my skillset since I wasn’t able to compete with some of the big names coming out of the sidekick era.”

“I’ve never understood why the governments allowed kids to run around with superheroes in the first place,” Alex admitted, hiding any surprise at the admission that Ms. McGowrie must be closer to his grandmother’s age than to his own. “I mean, it’s not exactly a safe line of work.”

“Nor was war,” she pointed out. “It’s not the sort of issue that was openly addressed back before the late 1960s – there was nothing like the social media you kids grow up with these days. There were a lot of unspoken understandings. The danger was the point, you see.”

Alex frowned. “I… don’t see.” Unless…

“Ah, youth.” The helicopter rocked slightly. “Danger meant trigger events – or burn-through was the lovely term used at the time. I’m sure you can guess what term was used when a mutant didn’t survive one. The more triggers a mutant goes through, the more powerful they are, and we don’t trigger past the age of twenty or thereabouts. Even that late is rare.”

“So they wanted powerful mutants and encouraged putting children into danger.”

“More that they didn’t actively oppose it until the civil rights movements started getting out of hand. Among other reasons.” She sounded amused. “And wanting mutants is a relative term. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘mutant gap’?”

“I don’t think so, no.” He rubbed his chin. “Something like… tech gap. Or missile gap? They thought they were falling behind?”

“Well done, that’s it exactly. It was pretty clear then – and it’s perfectly true now – that war zones like Africa and China - although China hadn’t quite collapsed at the time, it was in the communist heyday back then - were bringing out more and more powerful mutants. As long as they were killing each other over their vest-pocket empires, America didn’t really care and the rest of the world wasn’t all that bothered either. Largest continent in the world, but the climate sucks and at the risk of sounding racist, some of those jungle-bunnies are still barbarians these days, never mind back when the colonies had just collapsed. No offense.”

“None taken.” Alex didn’t feel any particular affiliation with them, whatever their skin colour.

“But when those mutants left Africa… well, things got dicey.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. And there was perfectly normal paranoia about each other. The mutant soldiers of the Second World War were in recent memory, so if other wars got hot it was logical that they could be fielded again. Not to put undue blame on him, but if the third Major Victory had been sent into the Suez – and I happen to know that he was on a carrier in the Eastern Med back then – the Egyptians would have had a very bad day. He might not have made it… they had their own mutants, but there weren’t many back then who measured up to Maj the third.”

“You knew him.”

He could practically see her grin. “We crossed paths once or twice. Not someone I wanted to cross, but otherwise he was pretty civilised. There were much worse out there.”

I get the distinct impression you weren’t on his side then. “So kids were going out, mutating time and again, dying or becoming strategic weapons?”

“Or major supervillains. A lot of the big names on that side of the law had just had too much. Surviving a burn-through wasn’t the same thing as being unscathed. We’ll talk about this in class, but have you come across Viperia?”

“No. But I’ve heard a thing or two about her.”

Ms. McGowrie made an understanding noise. “She’s actually surprisingly functional, but she reminds me of so many of the people I met back then. Claiming to be a demi-god is one way to deal. You don’t have to worry about your humanity if you don’t recognise that as a consideration. And let’s face it, she’s got more in common with some of the ancient myths of Heracles or Cu Cuchlain than she has with the man on the street.”

Alex rested his head against the back of the seat. “So… why did they change? You mentioned civil rights, but there were other issues?”

“It varies from country to country. Personally, I’ve always thought that the Soviets’ willingness to be more open about what they had available if the Cold War got hot was in part concern that the People’s Legion was getting too powerful. It’s hard to claim everyone’s equal when the evidence very clearly shows otherwise.”

“What about in the UK? You mentioned the third Major Victory.”

“Ah yes. Good old parliament. Always burying issues, but eventually something got rubbed into their faces. I don’t know exactly because no one is talking but I can make a guess.”

“Such as?”

“Well, usually the transition from one Major Victory to another is pretty carefully covered up, but Maj the third was just so much more powerful than his successor that it was almost immediately noticed. And this coincided with, let me see, Lady Victoria dropping out of sight for over a year, and pretty obviously a replacement when she returned – a vast improvement in my book, by the way. Oh, and a by British standards very hasty rushing through of bills banning the use of children in paranormal law enforcement and a whole raft of recreational medications… You’re a smart boy, what do you make of it?”

Alex considered that. Recreational medications presumably meant drugs. She was strongly implying a connection. “What would drugs have to do with Lady Victoria and Major Victory both retiring at the same time…? Unless you’re saying that one of them was taking them.”

“Like I said, I can’t confirm that.” Ms. McGowrie paused. “But I’d not be surprised if somewhere in that time frame there was a hell of a lot of collateral damage, the sort of thing you’d get if a pair of top tier mutants went at each other. That Lady Victoria was more than just a little unstable and I have to wonder if she resorted to chemistry to deal with it. She’d certainly triggered more times than Triumph – it’s not hard to believe that one more might have taken her over the edge.”

“Like Mr. Colton punching Viperia across the lake?”

“Oh, worse than that.” He felt the helicopter shake a little and wasn’t sure that it was turbulence or Ms. McGowrie’s hands. “Little Vicky had already had six triggers and the sort of therapy we’re giving Viperia – her real name’s Tuwi-shande, by the way, sweet girl under the god complex – hadn’t even been thought of back then. And Colton’s not as smart as Maj was but he’s probably a better straight fighter. No, imagine a fight with that sort of fight where neither side has a clear advantage. Fifteen, twenty minutes… maybe an hour. It’s the one weakness in my theory that I can’t pin down anything to show there was a fight like that.”

“So you could be wrong.”

“Oh yeah. Hell, maybe she just OD’d in a corner and Maj forced the restrictions on them. He might have had the connections to pull it off. If so, his disappearing might have been a quid pro pro – they pass the laws he wants and he resigns - because they’d sure as hell never trust him again if he tried that.”

“So what would have happened to him? I mean, he’d still be one of the most powerful mutants around.”

“I’ve no idea. He looked as if he was aging, so it’s possible he just retired. Not all mutants have slowed aging. There aren’t all that many I know that are as old as me.”

“You do carry the years lightly,” Alex said with an air of faux-gallantry.

She laughed at him. “Flattery will get you nowhere. Let’s talk about something else. I cover this sort of thing every year in classes. Have you ever been to Scotland?”

“Yes. My mother comes from the borders.”

“That hardly counts. I’m a highlander myself.”

“As in the region or the film franchise?”

“Hah. You get talking drunk once in Hollywood,” she snorted. “I hate those movies.”

He twisted as if he could see through the bulkhead into the cabin. “You’re kidding.”

“My name is Heather McGowrie,” she said in a mockingly pretentious voice. “I was born in the highlands of Scotland eighty years ago and I cannot die… Unless my head comes away or any of half a hundred perfectly normal causes of death crop up. There’s no secret society of immortal duellists haunting the corners of the world. I’m in good health and likely to enjoy it for a long, long time, but that’s all I got. Mind you, Sean Connery was a sexy sexy man. I’d have forgiven the scriptwriters a lot if they’d let me on the set to meet him. A bit decrepit now, unfortunately.”

“I will take your word for it,” Alex said drily.

“Oh, come on. You’re joining my class because of a pretty girl. You have no grounds to complain.”

“Two pretty girls.”

“I told you to cut out the flattery,” Ms. McGowrie said in an amused voice. “Borders, hmm. It doesn’t show.”  
“I didn’t always look like this.”

“Ah. I thought the delicate features might be a result, but your skin as well?”

“Yeah. And that’s delicately put.”

“You’re a long way from being the only mutant who has an ambiguous appearance. The last guy to wear the Leatherneck costume didn’t start life as a guy, you know. That bit about him being a little bit queer was a cover-up, because that was somehow more palatable.”

“I don’t see why.”

The teacher made a thoughtful sound. “And the world moves on. A lot of people would disagree with you. Back when I was your age, I probably would have thought a lot less of him. But now… maybe you’re right. He never talked about it with me, of course. We really weren’t fond of each other.”  
“You must have had an adventurous life.”

“Kid, I was born to kick over the traces. I’m surprised I’ve stuck it out this long at AVM. The Doctor’s a smooth talker and he pays well, but there’s not a year I don’t think about packing it in and hitting the trail again.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Oh, now you want rid of me?”

“No, just curious.”

There was a long silence and then she said. “I was there almost from the beginning. If I don’t teach you kids about our history - I who lived it - who will? And how much will they get wrong?”


	9. Morning Has Broken (Abort, Retry, Fail?)

Monday came, as it did every week. This week it came with classes.

Alex had gotten more practise now and he went from his bed to the castle and then into the bathroom with two steps and no wobbles. He was more than tempted to stray beyond the castle again, but it would be unwise without someone with him and perhaps something to deal with any dangerous wildlife better than a random stick.

The showers weren’t empty, Doug was stood by one mirror shaving and Xiang Ho stood under one shower, water so cold that it made Alex shiver just walking past the stall pounding on him. The Chinese boy ignored him, a favour that Alex was more than happy to return, and he made sure his own shower was a more pleasant temperature before stepping in.

Fifteen minutes later he was about to embark on perhaps the most challenging thing he’d done since getting here. Waking Thomas in time for breakfast.

“Thomas, it’s time for breakfast. Get up.”

The larger boy rolled over and burrowed under the pillows.

Alex tried to shake his shoulder but in response the other boy flailed one arm dangerously and mumbled something incoherent.

“…alright. I tried being nice.”

“warugble.”

“I’ll take that as a challenge to do my worst.” He fiddled with his phone to get the right mp3 cued up to the right spot in the track – he’d trimmed it out from the full song the previous night - and dialled the volume up as far as the feeble speakers could go. Then he held it close to Thomas’ ear and thumbed play.

“COME ON YOU LAZY BUM, NOW GET YOUR BUTT OUT OF BED! YOU GOTTA GO BACK, BACK BACK TO SCHOOL AGAIN!”

“AaAAh!” Thomas reared up.

Fortunately, Alex was ready for this and backed away to sit on his bed. “Good morning Thomas.” He paused the track, then shut the music down entirely. “First day of classes. I suggest you get a shower, breakfast and ready for class.” He paused. “Start with a shower. Seriously. I have no idea what you were doing last night, but you stink.”

Thomas raised his arm and sniffed. “Uh… yeah, good thinking.”

“What do you have first?”

“English. Same as you.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “With the Sophomores.”

“Yeah. Respect, for a fellow lit nerd.”

“I just like to read,” Alex told him. “Anyway, get cleaned up and we can grab breakfast.”

His roommate grabbed a pair of joggers and a hoodie before exiting and Alex checked the charge on his own kindle and the one issued for class. It all looked good and he bagged the latter with a fresh notebook and some spare pens. He might not need the notebook, but better to have it and not need it than not have it and need it.

Another problem, Alex noted, was that he hadn’t actually done any laundry since he arrived here, almost a week ago. The bag he was using for clothes that needed to be cleaned was bulking up. He’d have to explore the laundry room tonight after class. Maybe Hobbit would be willing to spare the time to walk him through how they worked, because he was uneasily aware that he’d paid very little attention to how his Mum handled laundry. It had just been collected from the basket and handed back to him, cleaned and ready to put away again.

He did a bit more tidying up, killing time until Thomas returned, looking rather more awake and certainly smelling less offensive. Of course, he then spoiled that a little by spraying himself liberally with deodorant, but Alex flagged that down as one of the things he was just going to have to get used to.

“Okay.” Thomas grabbed his own jacket. “Let’s get breakfast.”

“Not taking your class stuff?”

“I’ll come back for it.”

Alex shrugged and left his bag on his desk. If they were coming back then there was no point hauling it around.

The dining hall was busier than Alex had ever seen it before, with longer queues. There was no possibility of the two boys having a table to themselves and they grabbed the end of another occupied table once they’d filled their trays and dug in.

“I’m glad it’s not likely to be this crowded at lunch,” Thomas muttered between mouthfuls of cereal.

Alex cut open a second sausage. “It’s probably not so bad earlier.”

“Don’t even think about getting me up earlier. I’m a growing boy. I need my sleep.”

“Growing Boy?” Alex grinned. “Is that your codename?”

Thomas pointed at him with his spoon and swallowed what was in his mouth. “Don’t start, Mr. Narnia.”

“Still less embarrassing than Growing Boy.”

“Or Power Xtreme,” Thomas chuckled.

“Give it a rest. He’s not in his right mind when he does that sort of thing.”

A chair slid back at the next table and someone walked away, judging by the comments without taking their tray. Alex craned around and saw a brief flash of what looked like Danny Paine’s sweater at the door. “Oh Christ, Thomas. Was he behind me?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re a jerk.”

“It’s funny.”

Alex looked at his breakfast. He’d eaten most of it and his appetite was gone all of a sudden. “I disagree.”

He picked up his tray and then turned around to get Danny’s as well. “I’ll see you in class.”

“What? Just hang on, I thought we were going back together for our stuff.”

“That was the plan. Keyword being was.”

* * *

Getting to English class, which was in Galeano Hall, didn’t actually take very long and Alex was one of the first students there. A wheelchair was parked behind the teacher’s desk, but there was no occupant, so he picked out a seat fairly far forward where he would have a decent view. He suspected Thomas would prefer the back row, which might be for the best right now.

He hadn’t arrived long before other students though. Jimmy Carstairs and Suzy Kee were both present although not paying much attention to anyone but each other as they sat behind the same desk, with her in his lap, feet up on the other chair.

A moment later another cluster of sophomores arrived, Xiang Ho and a cluster of Asian – probably Chinese – students. Chang Mei gave Alex a little wave but sat at a desk with the other girl in the group. A moment later, the bulky shape of Acantilado came through the door, carrying a large and heavy chair. The brick-red boy neatly stacked the two chairs from the desk beside Alex and put them at the side of the classroom before putting his own chair down and sitting on it. He turned and looked at Alex thoughtfully. “Are you sure you’re in the right classroom?”

“I think so.”

“You know this is a Sophomore class?”

“Yes.”

The older boy nodded. “Okay then.” He stuck his hand out. “I doubt you remember my codename…”

“Acantelado.” Alex grinned and shook the hand. “No idea what it means though.”

“Well, it’s more… Acantilado,” he said, carefully sounding it out. “But good first try. It means… well, Rocky. More or less. My real name is Paulo Bustamonte. It’s usually clearer to use codenames when I’m with the guys though, since Tungarak’s real name is Paulos.”

“Alex McKenzie. No codename at the moment.”

“Yeah, best to put some thought into that. There’s one girl who decided Fourplay – the number – was a good idea. She had four distinct aspects to her powers, you see.”  
“What’s so…” He sounded it out inside his head. “Ohhhh.”

“Yeah. I hear that one of the kids in your class already dropped the ball, although not so bad.”

“He’s got… issues. I don’t know the details.”

“That’s nothing new here,” Paulos agreed.

Danielle arrived, looked around the room and snagged the seat next to Alex. “Hi. How are you getting on?”

“Pretty well.”

“I didn’t see you over the weekend. We thought you might like to join in another game.”

“I would have liked that,” Alex agreed. “But I was getting dragged around for my student job.”

“There’s always next week. Hi Rocky,” she added with a wave.

“Flashover,” he responded and returned the wave.

“How’s Coronado this year?”

The large boy shrugged. “As if the Stone Men weren’t enough of a thing, there’s a freshman who can petrify people. Don’t see that ending well.”

Danielle nodded, sending her long hair flying. “The Doctor might figure something out.”

“If he can’t, I dunno who could,” agreed Acantilado.

Thomas entered the room, saw Alex was already sharing his desk and flashed him an unrepentant thumbs up before, as Alex had guessed, taking a seat in the back row. A moment later, a couple more boys arrived, but they were rather overshadowed by the large cat following them.

Alex blinked.

No, he’d seen correctly. A large cat – and not a housecat, some sort of… great cat. Not a tiger but something sizeable. A bit bigger than a cheetah, but not large enough to be a tiger or a lion. The pattern of its fur didn’t suggest anything obvious… some kind of leopard.

No one else seemed bothered, except Thomas who – perhaps reflexively - grew more than a foot. “What’s with the big pussy?”

Danielle beamed. “That’s Miss Ganteaume.”

“…what?”

The cat stalked over to the teacher’s desk, nudged the wheelchair back from it and then bounded up onto the seat. There was a twisting and blurring, and a moment later a woman sat in the chair, reaching down to adjust its position. She scanned the room, obviously doing a headcount. “I think we’re all here. And do try to be more imaginative, Mr. Russell. I’ve heard that joke – if you can call it that – dozens of times.”

“I know most of you from last year,” she continued. “Where we covered the basic toolbox of writing in English, along with some but not all of the exceptions. If it’s any consolation to those of you who found it a struggle, you may take consolation in the fact that it was at least as painful an experience for me. Our two freshmen have tested highly enough in their placement exams that there’s reasonable hope that they’ll be able to keep up.”

“This year we’ll be examining these tools in their use, both how the class reading material uses them and in experimenting for yourselves. You’ll also learn how those rules change… and perhaps how to break them in creative fashion.” Her lips quirked. “Perfidious Albion, a term dating back some three centuries, wasn’t said with reference to the English language but it might as well have been. For those of you used to more structured and rigid languages, this may make it challenging but it also rewards creativity.”

Reaching down she pulled out a laptop, already open, and plugged in a mouse. Tapping on it, a projector on the ceiling came to life, displaying bright images on the wall beside her.

“While the written language can stand alone, it’s often used in combination with imagery. Comic books are an excellent example of this. Mr. Corrigan -” Suzy had vacated Jimmy’s lap when the teacher arrived. “- what do you make of this?”

“There’s no speech bubbles,” he said after a moment. “The characters are speaking but it’s all written at the top.”

“Precisely. Very good. This particular comic strip dates back to the days when the convention of speech bubbles wasn’t as widely accepted. As a result, the art is given more room, and the sentences at the top of the image are properly constructed, grammatically. Now, is this a good thing?”

Alex hesitated and glanced around but no one seemed willing to speak up. He raised his hand tentatively.

“Mr. McKenzie?”

“It depends.”

“An equivocal answer from our one English student of English. But accurate, context is king. Let’s contrast with a more recent comic strip.” She manipulated the laptop and a second image popped up next to the first. “Here, the speech bubbles make it clear without additional exposition who is saying what. Therefore, there is no ‘he said’, since the art makes it obvious, requiring less text. It’s a more efficient way of using text. You’ll note that the sentences spoken by the characters remain formally correct… but would someone actually speak like that?”

“Why not, if it’s clear?” asked Xiang Ho. “Isn’t that the most important thing?”

“Ah, but you yourself have just contracted twice,” Miss Ganteaume pointed out. “That is not required to be speaking correctly, and it’s considered a valid grammatical alternative, but it is also the result of slurring of words together. By doing so – or not doing so – you can convey details about the characters without making them explicit. A more formal speaker may be seen as better educated… but perhaps also as having something of a stilted and formalistic personality, whereas someone who regularly contracts words or habitually makes the same grammatical error, would seem to be less educated… or perhaps of a less formal personality.”

She cleared the screen and brought up a page of text. “Let’s look at this passage. Neither speaker is named, but the speakers alternate regularly. Can we tell out of context which is speaking, even when one has more than one consecutive paragraph of dialogue?”

Danielle leant forwards. “One of them’s using contractions… no, they both are, but different ones.”

“Correct.” The teacher looked around. “Each has a consistent pattern representing their differing accents. This would become even more obvious if read out loud. Now, what other methods could be used to demonstrate this differentiation?”

* * *

“See you in math,” Danielle told Alex as she left the classroom.

Thomas patted him on the shoulder as he walked past him. “You move fast. Nice work.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Thomas.”

“Why, are you planning on hogging it for yourself?” he laughed as he left.

“I’ll catch right up, Lin,” Mei said and paused at the door, looking at Alex. The other girl accepted Xiang Ho’s (Alex realised his personal name was just Ho, but that felt weird to use as a name on its own) arm and left. “Alex, we’re planning on playing Dominion again on Wednesday. If you’re not too buried in homework by then, do you want to join us?”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“You’re good company,” she said with a smile. “Besides, we’re all a bit too used to each other. Having someone new join us shakes the games up a bit.”

“Okay then. If homework isn’t too bad and I don’t get called away for student work.”

“What’s your job?” she asked.

“I… well, courier I guess.”

“Courier? How does that work?”

“I can sort of teleport, so if they want something taken to or collected from the nearest cities…”

Mei nodded. “Ah, very useful. I suppose that you need to know where you’re going, thus your mysterious absence over the weekend.”

“I was getting shown Angle Inlet, Warroad and a few other places.”

“Very interesting.” Then she winked. “Although also a little disappointing. Gossip said that you flew off with Ms. McGowrie for a torrid weekend.”

“Uh… I don’t think I’m quite her type,” Alex said mildly, not entirely offended by the joke.

Acantilado finished putting the chairs back. “Tungarak will be relieved,” he said in an amused tone. “He was very jealous.”

“Seriously, nothing happened. Dr. Franck was there for the first leg anyway.”

The sophomores both nodded. “Yeah, that’d make it awkward,” Mei said with a wink. “But just for the first leg? What about her other leg? They’re both very nice.”

“Errr…”

“What? I’m straight but I’m not blind.”

Alex sighed.

“You don’t hang out with many girls, do you Alex?” she asked.

“Not really. Unless my sister counts.”

“For this, no. Let me clue you in to something that puzzled me at first about American girls and I guess it might apply to the ones in your country too. They’re just as interested in sex as any other girl – and probably more so than boys since we tend to mature a little sooner.” Mei held up one finger. “But for some reason they like to pretend not be. Maybe it’s a holdover from Victorian times, or maybe it’s just to keep horny boys from realising they have rather more leeway than they think they do.”

“Uh…?” Alex really wasn’t sure what to say.

“Are you sure you’re allowed to break the code of silence?” Acantilado asked mildly. “Won’t the sisterhood of teenage girls silence you for this betrayal?”

Mei glanced left and right, as if checking to see if anyone was listening to them. (Only Miss Ganteaume seemed to be paying attention, and she seemed more amused than offended). “Well, since my life is in your hands now, I may as well tell you something else. If you like a girl, don’t wait for her to show interest. If she isn’t interested then you’ll be waiting forever, and if she is then she’s probably waiting for you to say something. If you get rejected, at least you tried. And the confidence to ask is often all it takes to at least get a date.”

“Just keep anything beyond a date until you’re not on campus and under our supervision,” the teacher said, wheeling her chair around the desk. “Now go on, all three of you. You have classes to get to and I’ve got my next class on their way.”

“Civics next?” Mei asked. “That’ll be Mr. Whitley – he’s alright.”

“And it’s just across the way,” Alex confirmed as they left the classroom.

“So convenient!” Mei agreed as she went towards the stairs.

Pushing open the door to the classroom on his schedule, Alex saw that half the desks were full already and Mr Whitley was studying something on his laptop. Three of those already there were Chinese boys from his corridor: Cong Feng, Qiu Shing and Wang Xun. The first two were sitting together while Xun had parked himself next to a girl and was speaking to her.

Checking the rest of the room, Alex spotted Pavel and took the seat next to him. “Hi.”

“Welcome to the cultural indoctrination,” the other boy greeted him.

There was a snort of laughter from the teacher. “Believe me, Mr. Zavarev, your indoctrination started a long time ago. Probably about the first time that you started to walk and talk. America has been exporting its culture very effectively since the Second World War, if not before. Perhaps the more effective because we haven’t been seriously trying to.”

Diamond stood from behind the desk and moved over to close the door. “You all seem to have arrived on time, which isn’t bad for the first day. Alright, let’s talk about what we’re going to be covering.”

He returned to the desk and leant against it. “For better or for worse, you’re going to be living in the United States for a while. Civics in general is supposed to make sure that students are familiar with how the government works and the general values and laws they live under. This is particularly important for you, since you haven’t grown up with it. Now, sure, a lot of this won’t matter once you go home, but it will matter for the next few years. And by looking at how we do things from here, you may realise things that you haven’t noticed before about your own home, for better or for worse.”

“Let’s start at the beginning. Most states have their root in some sort of military warlord. There was originally one central ruler who had all the political power and then they – or more sometimes their successors – wind up sharing it out as they have to delegate and have to compromise. The United States is an exception as it was made up of individual states that voluntarily chose to share government power, albeit with safeguards for their individual status.”

Diamond paused. “Also, we were founded by lawyers. May not have been the best idea but it’s worked out for a couple of centuries so it’s a bit too late to change now.”

“The agreement between the states is the Constitution. Some of you may have heard of constitutional amendments?”

Alex was among those that nodded.

“The constitution that we have has been amended since it was first put together… when? Does anyone happen to know?”

“1776?” asked Xun. “That was when you became a country, isn’t it?”

“Right general period but wrong, that was the declaration of the independence. A different document, although still important and we’ll be looking at it. Anyone else?”

Alex hesitated and then said, “1783? After the end of the War of Independence?” He wasn’t sure he had the year right.

“Warmer but still wrong. There was an agreement between the states before that, one that yielded much less power to the federal government. That agreement, the Articles of Confederation, was gradually accepted over several years during the War of Independence, but it was quite impractical. Only shortly after the war was won there were already cracks forming. Parts of New England – that’s a region, not a state, something that I know has confused some of our past foreign students – were actually considering going back to British or actively refused to pay taxes to a federal government. And that was far from the only problem.”

“There was no president to provide leadership to the republic, just a Congress that was increasingly toothless. The United States as we know it was the second attempt and was drawn up in 1787 in a new convention with delegates from twelve states, although attendance was pretty variable. After months of debate, just over half the delegates signed, although all twelve states participating had at least one representative signing. Importantly, it was agreed not as an ideal but as something that was as good as they could manage at the time. And so, over the years, we’ve added and removed sections as seemed fit at the time.”

He paused. “It’s an ongoing process, there are usually about a hundred proposed changes a year, most of which are dismissed very early on. The changes aren’t binding until three quarters of the states accept the change, what we call ratification. The oldest amendment still waiting for ratification dates back to 1789. Most proposed amendments these days have a deadline included that automatically nullifies the proposal if it isn’t ratified before a particular date.”

“Okay, enough of stuff you could find on Wikipedia. How does this affect you?”

“Well, firstly it means that each state has its own laws separate from those of the United States. This includes a number of items but one thing that you may notice if you go to Warroad and decide to by something is that the prices on the package don’t necessarily add up to what you pay. Very frustrating for a lot of people. The reason is that there are sales taxes applied by the state and sometimes by municipalities. Not everything has the taxes on it, but if you check a receipt it should specify.”

Diamond’s face was curiously impassive. “For those of us used to it, it’s automatic to allow for this and to have at least a rough idea of what it applies to and how much. For others…” He shrugged. “We’ve had students sure that they were being cheated. Which can be fun to sort out. Minnesota sales tax is 6.875 percent, about one fourteenth of the total. It doesn’t apply to clothes or food bought to be eaten elsewhere, but it does apply to food you buy in a restaurant, for a common example.”

“Now, have any of you ever tipped anyone?”

Pavel shrugged. “A gratuity?”

“Yes. Which is not the same as a bribe.”

Alex leaned forwards and started taking notes. This actually seemed pretty useful. A class that taught all the little things that you were assumed to somehow pick up by osmosis. He’d always been bad at that.

* * *

By lunch, Alex was feeling as if the mutant side of the school was pretty much a secondary feature. Maths had, like English, been pretty much what he’d expected he would have been learning back in the UK. Other than the US habit of dropping the ‘s’ at the end of the word but that wasn’t exactly a barrier to communications. He still knew what they meant, which was the important thing.

“You’re pretty good at math,” Danielle noted as they walked back out of Galeano Hall and towards Quesada.

He shrugged. “I’m okay. It’s nothing special. The hard part is remembering what rules to apply when. Once you do that it’s just attention to detail.”

“So that’s where I’m probably going wrong,” she told him. “Do you want to go get lunch with me and the rest of the gang? We all have Phys Ed next.”

“Sure.” Alex hitched at his bag and spotted Danny Paine up ahead. There were three freshmen in the same class – Alex, Steve Maxwell and Danny – but most of the freshmen were familiar from English earlier in the day. “Uh, could I invite Danny to sit with us?”

Danielle blinked. “Me?”

“No, Danny Paine – he’s on my corridor.” He pointed.

“Oh, sure. That’ll be fine.”

“Thanks.” He paused. “My roommate was being a jerk earlier. I figure maybe if Danny makes some friends.”

“I get it,” she said with a grin. “Some people just aren’t as outgoing and good at making friends as you are.”

“And that’s a very low bar,” Alex admitted. “Hey, Danny. Do you want to sit with us for lunch?”

The other boy paused and then blinked, looking back at Alex. “Uh, you mean me?”

“Yeah.” Alex lowered his voice. “Look, Thomas was out of line this morning. And Danielle and her friends are okay, it’s a chance to make some more friends? It’s okay if you don’t want to.”

Danny toyed with the hem of his sweater. “Uh… if it’s not a bother.”

He shrugged. “You’re not exactly Rowdy Robbie Piper, Danny. This is probably the most we’ve talked and we’ve been rooming in the same wing for almost a week.”

“Okay.”

Danielle caught up – not that it took much for her to do so since she’d been just a couple of paces behind, eavesdropping shameless. “Hi, nice to meet another Danny. Should we set up a secret handshake?”

“Another Danny?”

“My name’s Danielle. Danielle Beaudoin,” she explained. “You might have met my brother Philip, he’s in Ocampo too?”

“Um.” Danny seemed to find the paving they were walking on very interesting. “I don’t think so.”

Mei shook her head. “You’re taking Workshop, aren’t you? I saw your name on the tool lockers.”

Danny blinked. “You did?”

“Yeah. I set them up for the Freshmen this year, it’s part of my student job,” she explained. “Nothing fancy, just putting the name tags on them and verifying the keys before they’re handed out.”

“You get your own lockers in workshop class?” asked Alex.

The Chinese girl nodded. “Keeping greasy tools in the dorms can cause a lot of mess in a hurry. And besides the standard tools we’re loaned by the school, a lot of us build our own custom tools so it gives us somewhere to stock them. If you keep taking the class, eventually you can request a whole workshop. You have to justify why the standard shared shops aren’t right for what you’re doing and it’s mostly the upperclassmen, but it does happen.”

“How many workshops can there be in Drake? It’s big, but not that big.”

Danielle grinned. “Oh, I know this one. There are really deep basements under the hall. The workshops up here on the surface are just for school maintenance and the starting classes.”

Danny nodded quietly. “Yes. They gave us a little tour in first period. It’s impressive.”

Jimmy and Suzy were waiting by the door into Quesada, hand-in-hand. “What kept you?” she asked them and then glanced at Danny. “Oh, you were collecting another… pokey-man?”

“Pokemon, hon’,” Jimmy corrected her mildly. He stuck one meaty hand out to Danny. “Hi, we’ve met in passing I think.”

The boy shook Jimmy’s hand and then tucked his hand back in his pocket. “Hi,” he said in a small voice.

“Do not let him scare you,” Suzy told him. “Jimmy is just a big puppy. I am the one who bites.”

“Oh…”

“But,” the girl told him as the expanded group entered the dining hall and joined the queue. “I promise to restrain myself to my food. And anyone’s hands that stray onto my plate, Danielle.”

“But I love celery and you had a whole stack!”

“There was plenty of celery, you could have taken some yourself.”

Danielle shrugged. “I did. But I’d finished it and yours was right there.”

“And so are my teeth,” the other girl said, snapping them aggressively as they reached the food counters.

Mei stood up on her toes suddenly and waved over towards the upper balcony. “Lin has a table for us,” she declared.

“Yes, she went ahead.”

“Lin?” asked Alex, taking a couple of chicken breasts from a tray of them. There was a selection of toppings that could be added and he used the spoon to cover them both with cheese sauce.

“My roommate, I don’t think you’ve met her yet.” Mei shovelled some fries onto her plate and moved on to the vegetables.

Alex made a little bet with himself and wasn’t surprised to learn that the roommate in question was indeed the other girl from his first meeting with Xiang Ho.

“Thanks for holding the table for us,” Mei said as they got themselves settled around it. “I know you’d like to eat with Xiang Ho.”

Lin shook her head. She wore her hair up in a bun, although locks of hair were loose to either side of her face. “It’s not as if I have to spend all my time with him. We’re not surgically attached like Dreadnought and Tiger Lily.”

Alex found his fork, which had slid under the edge of his plate. “Who?”

Jimmy waved a hand. “Suzy and I. And it’s not surgical, Lin.”

“No, they won’t even let me tie him to me with a chain until we get out. Something about the dorms not being co-ed. So backward,” complained Suzy.

“I think they mean it figuratively,” Alex murmured to Danny who was looking a bit wide-eyed.

“Are you sure?”

“…no. I choose not to enquire too closely.”

Danny nodded and started cutting his own chicken.

“So have you picked a codename yet?” asked Jimmy. “It’s good to have one when they’re forming squads for Phys Ed, although you won’t really need one for the first week or two.”

“Well, I’m on a squad but I haven’t picked a codename yet.” Alex was aware that Danny wasn’t too happy about the tone of the conversation.

“A squad? Already?”

He shrugged. “Larry’s very keen on being pro-active. I don’t even know what the squads do, exactly.”

“It depends on the squad,” Mei told him. “Mostly it means going into the arena once or twice a week during Phys Ed and taking on some training dummies or maybe one of the other squads.”

“I figured something like that. I’ve not really been in a fight. Well, unless you count a schoolyard scuffle or two. And the boar I suppose.”

“Fights aren’t usually boring.”

“No, a boar. Like a wild pig.”

“Do you get those in England?” asked Danielle in some surprise. “I thought they didn’t really have any large wild animals left.”

“I don’t think we do. The thing is,” he explained, “I don’t really teleport from place to place as much as I step into another world and step out again. I don’t have to return where I entered the other world from. Of course, the first time I entered it I didn’t know how to return and whatever England is like there was at least one wild boar there.”

Jimmy nodded. “Well, you must have won.”

“My brother and I climbed a tree to get away.” Alex shrugged and decided the full story wasn’t exactly relevant. “Fortunately, I managed to get us both home before the trigger coma hit and I haven’t seen the boar since. It’s probably still there somewhere though.”

“So, what’s the other world like?”

“I’ve only seen a little.” Alex put some more chicken in his mouth and chewed, trying to put it into words. “Bear in mind, I’m pretty much limited to walking and I haven’t done much exploring yet.”

“You said world.” Mei cupped her chin. “Do you mean an entire planet?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. It could be.”

Jimmy almost choked on a fry and grabbed his water. “You mean,” he asked after swallowing a mouthful. “You could have an entire planet to Lewis and Clark on?”

Alex tilted his head questioningly. “Lewis and Clark?”

“Explorers,” Danny clarified quietly.

“Yeah, like Vespucci himself but on foot and through the American interior,” Danny nodded.

“Oh. Well, that’s the only way to find out I suppose. What I’ve seen so far is a bit of coastline and some islands.” I should probably draw up a map at some point, he thought. “Most of it’s heavily forested and overgrown but there’s a bridge between the coast and the nearest island, with a castle on the island side of it.”

“There are people there?” exclaimed Danielle.

“I don’t think so. I haven’t met any.”

“But someone had to have built the castle,” she pointed out.

Alex nodded. “I assume so, yes. But when I found it, it was empty. Just getting the door open was a bit tricky. No furnishings or anything. I’m amazed it’s still mostly weather-proof.”

“Perhaps you will show it to us someday,” offered Suzy. “I must say, I am curious.”

“Well…” He thought about it. “I don’t see why not. I can take you across one at a time, one evening. Timing doesn’t line up exactly, but if I get it right then we should be able to visit when it’s still daylight there.”

“Neat,” Danielle said eagerly. “And if that boar turns up, you won’t have anything to worry about.” She winked. “It tries anything and it’s roast pork.”

Jimmy chuckled. “Don’t burn his forest down, Dani.” He lowered his voice. “She’s a little bit pyro.”

“I am not!”

Lin nodded slowly. “But she is right. Wildlife will not really be a threat to you. We may not be on the same squad, but we have a year’s practise with our powers. The wildlife shouldn’t be a problem. Do you need to ask permission before taking us with you though? It is off campus.”

“Don’t be a wet-blanket, Lin. We’re supposed to practise our powers and how can Alex do without leaving campus?”

Alex shrugged. “I’ll ask Mr. Colton this evening. They might want to send a teacher along or something, I haven’t really talked about it with them yet.”

Danielle sighed. “Oh Alex, live a little. Don’t you know it’s better to get forgiveness than permission?”

“Don’t push,” Jimmy told her a little firmly. “Alex has only had his powers for, what, a couple of months? Bein’ careful isn’t a bad thing.”

The girl sighed. “Okay. I guess you’re right. Sorry, Alex.”

“It’s okay. But I figure it might be a little bit of an issue if half a dozen students vanish and no one knows where they’ve gone.”

“Fair point,” agreed Mei. “Are you up for this?” she added to Danny.

“Me?” He hesitated and looked at Alex.

“You’re more than welcome.”

“S-sure.”

“Okay, I’ll ask Mr. Colton tonight and figure out what day would be best.”


	10. Practical Education

The Sports Hall was much more sturdily built than Alex had realised at first glance. There were small windows on the ground floor, enough to let light in, but they were all located at just above normal eye level so seeing in and out was difficult. The entrance was wide, which was pretty useful with a hundred or so students entering at the same time that about as many were leaving. There were a number of teachers just inside, calling instructions which turned the atrium into something of a cacophony.

“Sophomores, you are still in the changing rooms to the left!” a bearded man called out to the incoming students. “Freshmen, you’ll be using the changing rooms to the right. Teachers are waiting for you.” He was wearing some sort of body armour, which gave him an imposing look.

Alex looked to the left and saw that among the doors leading off from the hall, two on each side were double doors, marked like washrooms as being for men and for women. He went through the appropriate doors and found it led to a short corridor that dog-legged off to the side. At the far end was a smaller door with a sign declaring it to be the toilets while more double doors turned to the side away from the original entrance.

Past the door he found Dr. Wilder standing in a large locker room, with several other freshmen milling around. “Wait until everyone’s here,” the teacher told them. “I’ll give you some orientation in a moment.”

Alex found his way to Thomas and Larry. “Did you have a good lunch?”

“It wasn’t bad,” Thomas confirmed.

“How was yours? I see that issues eating upstairs are grossly exaggerated,” Larry added. “We got the same table as before without any problems.”

“Yeah, but all the Juniors and Seniors were in here,” Alex pointed out.

“Sure, but these so-called Euro Stars must have soph members and we got no aggro at all.”

“Your attention if you please.” Dr Wilder stepped up onto one of the benches and gave them another look over. “This seems to be all of you, so I’ll get started.”

“Firstly, on your way in you should have seen the toilets. They exist for a reason. Do not piss in the showers, if you think you might then go empty your bladders first. We won’t accept any excuses if someone’s urine is picked up in the shower drains – it causes infections and none of you are babies. If for some reason you don’t think you can avoid it, don’t use the showers and for god’s sake have your dorm parent set up an appointment with the hospice for you.”

“Secondly, you are sharing this locker room with the Juniors. Several of whom have enough time in the workshop that they can get your lockers open if they really want to, even without powers. Do not start a prank war because you will almost certainly lose it. Previous students to ignore this lesson have enjoyed such fabulous experiences as carrying out the class in a bright pink and glittery track suit.”

“You all have lockers assigned to you on the left. The order is alphabetical by surname. This should be same locker for the next four years. Inside the locker you’ll find a tracksuit and trainers. These are provided by the school and yes, they are cheap crap. They will almost certainly get destroyed at some point and will be replaced without charge, as well as replaced if you grow out of them. If you want to wear something better, it’s at your own risk. The school will not pay for any personal clothes wrecked during the class. Now go get dressed, right now. If you want privacy there are a few small booths next to the showers.”

Alex spotted the booths – only four of them between more than twenty boys, with thin curtains across their entrances. Fighting for the use of them didn’t seem worth the bother, although he saw Danny heading that way.

His locker was around the middle of the row and was about his own height although much narrower. There was a key in the lock with a tag bearing his name and the locker number in large and easily visible letters. Opening it he found a tracksuit hung up inside and pulled it out. Nothing to wear under it so shorts and T-shirt were presumably at the student’s risk. He might need to see what a cheap T-shirt cost in the school store in case damage extended to those.

Going back to the nearest bench, Alex stripped down quickly and pulled on the tracksuit before going back and fetching the trainers. Checking inside, the size didn’t make sense to him for a moment and then he remembered that the Americans had their own system. He tucked his feet into them and the fit was pretty good. How did they know his shoe size?

“Put your clothes in the locker,” Dr. Wilder advised, working his way through the boys as they got changed. “We take no responsibility for anything that happens to clothes or possessions left out while you’re in the class.”

“What do we do with the keys?” asked Larry.

“Hang onto them for a moment,” the Doctor told him and went to the end of the room. “Okay, is everybody changed?” No one spoke up. “And do your shoes fit? I’m aware it’s almost impossible for a tracksuit to fit, but proper footwear is important.”

One hand went up. “Mine are a bit tight?” Xun admitted.

“Okay, come here and we’ll get that sorted out now.” The doctor took out a key and opened a side-door into what was apparently a storeroom. “Give me your trainers, Mr. Wang.”

“Wang,” someone sniggered.

“Yes?” Xun asked innocently, unfastening his trainers and handing them over. “What?” No one said anything so he shrugged.

Dr. Wilder accepted the shoes. A moment later he handed Xun another pair. “Try these.”

The Chinese boy put them on and took a couple of steps. “This is fine, thank you.”

“Good.” Dr Wilder pointed to another doorway, this one leading directly up some stairs. “We’ll go upstairs in a moment. Keep your keys in hand. At the top hand them off and we’ll replace the tag with a wristband so you can carry it around with you safely.”

Upstairs they reached a large, high-ceilinged gym that seemed to fill about half of the building by Alex’s guess. Looking up at the windows he orientated himself and spotted a gallery looking down on the gym from the top of the interior wall. Several doors marked the wall below, one of which they’d emerged from, and he guessed that one led through to whatever occupied the other side of the Sports Hall.

There were two tables already out with boxes of plastic wristbands. The man from the entrance was waiting between them. “I’m Mr. Armstrong,” he announced. “The head of Phys Ed. You may find teachers from your other classes here during Phys Ed, but during these classes they answer to me. Form two lines.”

The boys milled around in front of the desks, jostling for position. After a few seconds of this, Mr. Armstrong and Dr. Wilder pushed in amongst them, organising the chaos. Alex found himself pushed over to stand behind Pavel while Larry and Thomas ended up in the other queue after Mr. Armstrong simply shoved between their little cluster.

With the lines organised, the two men went to the desks. “Alright, one at a time,” Dr. Wilder instructed. “Hurry it up, the girls will be out in a moment.”

The first few boys were still being processed when Ms. McGowrie harried the girls up out of one of the other interior doors. “Welcome to Gym A,” she told them. “That’s Mr Armstrong, the head of Phys Ed, on the desk to the left, and Dr. Wilder on the right for those who haven’t met him yet. Now join the queues so we can get the keys sorted out.”

Alex wasn’t the only guy to turn around and watch the girls arriving, all wearing basically the same sort of tracksuits that they were.

“No spandex,” he heard Thomas complain under his breath.

From behind Alex, Xun made a pleased sound. “This is good too.”

Ms. McGowrie went to replace Mr. Armstrong at his desk – not the one for the queue that Alex was in – and the bearded man stood and walked around the two queues, eyeing everyone in them carefully.  
“We carry out a number of activities in Phys Ed,” he announced after finishing his circle. “Some are optional, others are not. Some options are restricted based on medical limits or my judgement of what you are and are not ready for. You may, if you disagree with my judgement, ask that Dr. Camille overrule me. I will warn you that he has never so far chosen to do so. Far be it from me to say that you are not a precious snowflake that he will give special treatment to though.”

Alex winced. Yeah, that didn’t sound like a great idea.

“Some of you have heard about squad skirmishes. Some of you have actually already formed squads. This is one part of Phys Ed. It is not optional. By the end of this semester you will all be on a squad and you will have all participated in at least one skirmish against either another squad or a simulated opponent.”

There were some mutters of discontent from behind Alex.

“I repeat,” Mr. Armstrong continued to circle them. “This is not optional. From next semester, every team will be doing such an exercise weekly. This will teach you to work as a team and how to synergize your respective abilities for maximum effect. It will not teach you to be the Justice League or the X-Men. If you don’t form a team on your own, you will learn to work with people you don’t know and perhaps even dislike. This might - just possibly – keep you alive in a crisis.”

“Besides this, you will carry out basic physical activities. This is for your own health – we feed you as much as you want or need so you will have plenty of energy for this. For better or for worse, you are going be sent out into a world where you are a target for bigotry and for exploitation. In some cases, you are looking at careers that are not safe. Being healthy, as opposed to a big fat blob, is a significant help. Expect running. Expect push-ups and sit-ups. There is an option of lifting weights although this is not a requirement.”

Alex reached the front of the line and handed his key over to Dr. Wilder who removed the name-tag and fitted the head of the key into the wristband, treading a plastic peg through the hole. He checked it would turn and then closed a strap across the key head. “If you keep the key in line with the wristband it won’t swing out and catch on anything,” he explained, using a device to secure the end of the strap. “And you can turn it to get the key out far enough to open your locker. Don’t lose it and don’t forget which locker is yours.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If these are the only activities you want to do, that is all you have to do,” Armstrong continued. “We do not compete against other schools in sports, for obvious reason. We have a small sports programme, involving basketball, with powers. Matches are once a week. As with squads you can form your own teams or turn up and we’ll form teams. There are no individual sports in my department. If you want to play tennis – or golf for that matter – then do not come to me.”

“We also have more practical options.” Mr. Armstrong paused and Alex, stepping aside for the other students turned to keep watching him.

“So long as you maintain the necessary physical requirements, you can take martial arts classes. These are not the same classes you would get at your friendly neighbourhood dojo, although there is some overlap. These teach you how to fight and how to survive fighting. You can and will participate in squad skirmishes without these classes, but you may find the experience painful and humiliating.” Mr. Armstrong seemed to relish that idea. “Victory is not solely the province of the strong, but it is the province of the prepared.”

“We do not teach you fight in a dojo on a mat. You are taught to fight in places that you may be attacked or that you might choose to attack. This includes using your environment and it includes weapons. Ms. McGowrie will continue to teach the use of a sword. It is an anachronism, but it is one that is highly effective for some mutants and if you are not one of those mutants then it is practical to know how to counter it.”

“We teach the use of guns and other ranged weapons – again, so long as you are otherwise in good condition. All classes are highly supervised and students who act dangerously will be removed without hesitation. We have a fine hospice and the vast majority of injuries can be treated quickly and far more effectively than anywhere else in the world… but if a bullet should happen to find your brain or heart then you will be dead. If your neck is snapped then you will be dead. And you are all – without any exception – capable of causing death without intent. With your powers or without them.”

“Our lessons are to harness that capability and to ensure that you do not accidentally cause your own deaths or others.” Mr. Armstrong stopped walking. “You are completely permitted to opt out of any optional class. If you would rather spend this class running in circles, this is fine. Running is possibly the most useful skill you can have right at the moment, and it is wholly applicable to squad skirmishes, where running away is always an option.”

He gestured towards Alex and the other boys who had already received their keys. Girls were beginning to join their little crowd. “Boys, move back against that wall.” He pointed at one of the end walls. “Line up along it. Girls, once you have your wristbands do the same on the wall facing them.”

“Today we will start you with a little running,” Mr. Armstrong told them. “Then we will watch a short warm-up between some of the sophomore squads. The Phys Ed section of the school’s intranet has a full range of the activities you can request to participate in, including those that will only be available once you have been here a little longer. Bear in mind that just because you apply for an activity does not mean you will be accepted. I recommend that you all discuss the matter with your counsellors. They aren’t just there to get your classes chosen at the beginning of a semester.”

A hand went up from the girls still waiting for their wristbands. “Can we use the sports hall at other times of day?” Alex thought it was Sarah but wasn’t sure.

Mr. Armstrong nodded sharply. “Depending on activities, the sports halls are available in the evenings and weekends. Students with free periods – unlikely for any of you this year, I am aware, may also use any parts not in use for classes. We do have optional extra Phys Ed classes for those interested, although they are only open if other academic requirements are satisfied.”

Larry raised his own hands. “How are squads chosen for skirmishes?”

“Squads may volunteer for skirmishes against each other,” Mr. Armstrong told him. “If a squad doesn’t choose to do so, then they will be assigned an opponent or exercise at my discretion or that of the teacher overseeing them. Some squads have preferred adversaries, which as fine as long as no one sandbags.”

“There is an informal tournament in the summer semester,” Dr. Wilder added, raising his voice to be heard over the last few girls waiting. “Squads wishing to participate submit themselves to the students organising it and are assigned matches to volunteer from. It’s quite popular for spectators and satisfies the participation requirements.”

Mr. Armstrong nodded in confirmation and Alex could almost feel Larry’s excitement. “I understand that some students like to use skirmishes between their squads to settle disagreements. This is permitted so long as the competition follows other rules. Be aware that grudge matches or obvious bullying with teams deliberately targeting less capable teams repeatedly will lead to disciplinary action. Squads have been disbanded for inappropriate behaviour. On the other hand, not all matches will be what is considered fair. Depending on the exercise, one side may be at an advantage due to their squad composition or due to handicaps imposed on the other team. These are at the discretion of the teachers supervising, subject to my review. If you feel your squad is being penalised unduly, you may request such a review after the fact and the review will be carried out by an impartial third party. If it is decided in your favour, which has happened, then you will be given more discretion in choosing how your squad participates in order to offset any disadvantage you have faced. How long that discretion last depends on the outcome of the review. Any such application is made through the intranet. Your counsellors or dorm parents can and should help you to make your case.” He smiled sharply. “It doesn’t count as suing us.”

The last girls received their wristbands and were waved back to the wall facing Alex and the other boys. Mr. Armstrong joined Dr. Wilder in moving the first of the two tables out of the way, while Ms. McGowrie picked up both chairs and then threw them across the gym towards where others were stacked. She followed this up by lifting the other table and trotting over to join the two male teachers, who recovered the chairs and put them away.

“She’s strong,” Larry noted, watching the teacher.

Thomas shrugged. “I could do that. I wouldn’t even need to grow… well, maybe a little to move that fast carrying it.”

“Do you think she’s got superhuman strength?”

“Could be. Or she might just be very fit,” Alex observed.

“We can all see she’s very fit,” Thomas said with a snicker.

Alex almost rolled his eyes, but Thomas was right in both senses of what he was saying. “She doesn’t seem to think of herself as a particularly powerful mutant.”

“So maybe a little of being in good shape and a little buff from when she triggered,” Larry decided.

Armstrong moved to the mid-point of the room. “Alright, time to see what we’re working on. You’re all to run from one end of the gym to the other. And I do mean run.”

“What if we run into each other?” asked Mary loudly.

“Try not to,” the teacher said, sounding fairly indifferent. “You can’t always expect to be running without any obstructions. Now.” He took a small whistle from around his neck and blew it sharply.

Alex didn’t particularly try to take the lead in the runners, which was probably wise because those who did intersected with the oncoming girls first and had to work out how to thread through their group. By the time that Alex reached them, the girls had bunched up and he was able to find a path through them without any collision.

Larry ran faster, getting ahead of Alex. “I don’t know how long we’ll be running,” he warned as they reached the opposite wall. “Stick together at a steady pace.”

“Seems smart,” Thomas agreed. The three of them turned and started back, seeing that the room was a mess of students running in both directions. “Form a line?”

“Sure, you set a pace?” suggested Larry.

The black boy nodded and pulled ahead a step before settling into what he seemed to find a comfortable pace. Larry fell in behind him and glanced ahead. “Use the fire extinguishers as markers,” he instructed. “If we run directly from one to the other, we’re going straight across the gym.”

“What if someone goes across that path?” Alex asked from behind him.

“That’s their look out.”

As they made their third trip across the gym, they passed Sarah and Mary, both still going strong, but were almost overtaking Kimberly, who was beginning to flag.

“This is unfair,” she complained as they crossed paths near the wall. “I’ve only got little legs.”

“Get behind me,” Alex suggested. “Just focus on keeping a steady pace.”

The girl nodded and slowed noticeably, breathing deeply, to let the boys pass her. Alex heard her sneakers on the floor again behind him as they kept going.

“Hey, squad poaching!” Mary gasped as they passed each other going the other way. She didn’t seem to be struggling though she and Sarah were definitely going faster than the other group.

Larry shrugged. “Catch up then.”

Alex didn’t take that seriously, but apparently Mary did because she took off sprinting suddenly, passing a surprised Sarah. They’d almost reached the far end again when the sound of feet behind them redoubled. “C-caught you!” Mary exclaimed.

“Okay, just steady on.”

“You’re not going very fast,” she observed as they turned around.

Alex shrugged and let her move ahead of him to slip in behind Larry. “He never said it was a race.”

Some of the other students were beginning to flag, while a great many others seemed fine. Their little group passed Sarah going the other way, but they also passed other boys who were slowing. Some of them had been in the leading group, but others had been slacking to begin with.

Danny Paine was more or less hanging on off to one side. Alex tried to catch his eye to wave him over to join them, but the boy – who had somehow ended up with a baggy tracksuit compared to everyone else – didn’t seem to spot him, perhaps focusing entirely on keeping up the pace.

The first collision happened when Jason Wilder tried to go around two girls he’d been passing. One girl stumbled into the other and she side-stepped suddenly, colliding with Dr. Wilder’s son. The two of them went down in a tangle and the other girl halted to try to help.

“Off, off, off, go sit down all three of you,” Ms. McGowrie threaded her way through the students and got them all upright.

“I can go on,” Alex heard Jason say.

“Probably, but I didn’t ask if you could.” She hustled them all off, picking a moment when other runners weren’t in the way. “Get some water for the girls if you still have energy.”

Over the next few minutes other students were pulled out until more than a dozen students were off at the side, some of them with cups of water from a cooler at the side.

Alex didn’t think he was likely to be the next one to drop out. He hadn’t run as far now as he had back in power testing and the speed wasn’t unmanageable. It was a bit embarrassing that Sarah had actually overtaken them earlier but as he’d said, it wasn’t a race.

By now the runners had mostly settled down with no more attempts to sprint, except for Wang Xun, who was merrily dashing back and forth with no sign of tiring.

Mr. Armstrong consulted his watch and then blew his whistle again. “Walk back and forth once more to cool down,” he ordered. “Then get some water.”

The students obeyed and slowly gathered around the water fountain to refresh themselves.

“This exercise wasn’t just an assessment of your endurance,” the bearded teacher advised them. “One of the wisest things you can do in a dangerous situation, such as a riot or an incipient battle between mutants, is to evacuate the area. Generally speaking, you will find yourself surrounded by other people trying to do the same – or just as likely, running around like headless chickens.”

He gestured to the students that had been pulled out of the running. “If this was a situation like that, the chances are that due to your own lack of endurance – or just bad luck – you would all have been killed or injured. Luck is something we can’t do anything about but the endurance to run far enough away and the agility to get past obstacles in your path are things we will be working on.”  
“Now then.” Mr. Anderson turned and pointed to a door. “Follow Dr. Wilder up the stairs to the gallery and we’ll take a look at one of the exercises you might face in a squad skirmish situation.”

The door led into a short corridor with a door at the other end, currently closed, and a stairway leading off from the side. Dr. Wilder took them up to the top and Alex saw that the gallery he’d seen before looked down on both sides of the gym. It was also occupied by a few dozen students already, mostly wearing the same style of tracksuits that everyone else was. He noticed though, that while the freshmen wore grey tracksuits, the sophomores – he saw Jimmy, Danielle and Suzy among them – wore royal blue.

Mr. Anderson was bringing up the rear of the class and he moved to stand between the freshmen and the sophomores, looking down into the other side of the gym.

“What you’re looking at,” he advised them, “is the bank robbery scenario. Not very realistic in this day and age – most banks don’t carry the sort of cash on hand for a large-scale robbery to be worthwhile – but it’s not unheard of for attempts to be made and it includes several factors that are useful to consider.”

Alex stared down and saw the gym was marked out with mats and padded obstacles. There was a low bar, presumably representing the bank counter, and several vertical stands with smiley faces on them huddled on either side. Higher barriers marked out what was presumably the edge of the ‘bank’ and four students were within that perimeter while six stood outside. Hovering in mid-air above them was Mr. Colton, wearing sweats.

“The team outside are Winter Sunshine, representing the heroes in this scenario. As you can see, the other team are at a numerical disadvantage. The Euro Brats are playing the villains. They need to keep one member in contact with the vault door -” Alex decided that this was a section of the outer perimeter behind the counter. “- for two minutes. If they can do that and then extract their group from the opposite side of the bank then they are judged to have won. If the hero team can prevent this and keep the innocent bystanders unharmed then they will have won. Any other outcome is a draw.”

Larry raised a hand. “Can’t the villain team assure themselves of at least a draw by taking out one of the bystanders right away?”

Mr. Armstrong smiled coldly. “That is one tactic. But outnumbered as they are, it is generally a better tactic to use the threat of doing so to force the heroes to divert their efforts into protecting the bystanders.”

In the air above the gym, Mr. Colton raised his hand. “The exercise will begin on my first whistle,” he declared in a booming voice. “It will end on the second. The exercise will begin in three… two…” The whistle was far less shrill but still clearly audible.

Without hesitation the six students outside rushed the ‘bank’. The first through the door was practically a blur, red energy arcing off him. It must be Hua Shoi-Ming, Alex thought.

For a moment, he thought that the speedster would simply tear past the three students acting as an outer perimeter, but all three responded with immediate attacks: flames raging from one, lightning from the second and the third – oh, that’s Fiona O’Grady, Alex recognised – hurling glowing energy balls. All three were in motion but they were also all clearing operating on a plan – Fiona was specifically targeting Shoi-Ming, the fire projector was going for the bystanders and the lightning blaster was targeting the slower six Winter Sunshine members, bunched as they came through the entrance.

A dark-haired girl whipped out a metal rod as she took the lead in and the lightning arced towards the rod, for some reason that Alex could only guess at. Meanwhile the flames guttered and were pushed back by a strong wind for a moment before they redoubled their fury. In that brief respite though, a wall of ice had sprung up to shield the bystanders and though it was melting, it wasn’t melting fast enough.

As if they’d planned for this, the three guards switched roles. Fiona switched her target to the wall while the fire projector went after the dark-haired girl.

Between blinks the rear two members of Winter Sunshine vanished and re-appeared behind the counter. A moment later one went back across it without any choice in the matter as the final member of the Euro-Brats smoothly kicked out and sent him flying without ever losing hold of the ‘vault door’.

“Ouch!” Alex heard Jimmy say. “Huan’s going to be feeling that one.”

Shoi-Ming was trying to get past to help his companions but with shifting of targets had left him open to the lightning and for all his speed, he couldn’t out dodge it and fell jittering to the floor.

The dark-haired girl ducked back behind her companions, a boy and girl who warded off the fire with such well-coordinated use of wind and ice that Alex honestly wasn’t sure which was which. She drew a gun of some kind and fired it at Fiona, a bolt of light knocking the Irish girl ass over tea kettle.

Despite the limitations of his position, the Euro Brat at the vault was holding off his lone assailant’s martial arts, less through technique than through sheer durability.

Then lightning lashed out and knocked out the martial artist.

“I think the Brats have this,” someone declared.

“Maybe not, look at Lin!”

Oh, it was Lin, Alex realised. The female half of the Winter Sunshine duo made a graceful gesture and Fiona lifted off the floor and flipped over the counter – screaming in outrage if Alex was reading her face correctly – and hammered into the Euro-Brat behind the counter as he was distracted in his momentary victory.

“Ouch! Clock reset!”

Sure enough, Alex saw that the boy was no longer touching the vault door.

The waves of fire redoubled suddenly and the walls of ice were no longer holding it back entirely. The boy with Lin – Xiang Ho – grabbed her and dragged her to the floor right before flames punched through.

The dark-haired girl tried to jump forward, but the lightning user returned his attention to her and she was forced to stop and use her rod again to ground his lightning before it could reach the bystanders.

Turning, the fire manipulator jumped the counter, picked up Fiona… and then vaulted back up over again, followed by his other team-mate

“What’s Hans doing?” Danielle exclaimed loudly.

Pushing another wave of fire ahead of them, the boys carried Fiona ‘out’ of the bank, the two Winter Dragon students ducking away.

“I think he’s going for the draw,” one of the freshman girls declared. It was the Indian girl from his civics class, Alex noted.

Ignoring the villains outside, the remaining three Winter Dragon members surrounded the lightning caster who raised his hands in surrender. A sharp whistle from Colton brought them all to a halt.

“That’s a draw!” he yelled a moment later. “Winter Sunshine rescued the bystanders but only captured one villain.”

“I am honoured to sacrifice myself for my comrades,” the ‘captured’ villain boasted in a thick accent.

The boy from before walked back and dope-slapped him. “It would still have been a draw if we all got out.”

Armstrong clapped his hands together sharply. “Okay, everyone. Down the stairs and we’ll do a quick post-mortem before I have to let you go for your next classes.”

* * *

Alex didn’t think he’d need a full shower but when he took off his tracksuit top his T-shirt was visibly sweat-stained. On the other hand, he didn’t have any showering gear here yet. He peeled off the shirt and wiped himself down with it then threw it into his locker and got changed.

“I strongly suggest that you all take the time to bring a towel and whatever else you consider to be minimum acceptable shower gear here,” Dr. Wilder advised as the boys changed. Most of the freshmen were in the same boat as Alex, so the sophomores were the ones using the showers. “A change of anything you would be likely to wear during class is also wise.”

Looking at the clock, Alex wasn’t sure he’d be able to take a shower after Phys Ed and get to Drake in time if it wasn’t for the fact that the break between classes was twice as long between fifth period and sixth period than the other breaks through the day. Speaking of which, he had to leave now if he was to get to Drake Hall for his next class.

Students were hurrying out of the Sports Hall and heading back towards the centre of the campus, crossing the quad towards different halls.

“This place is a sea of mud when it rains,” Danielle told him, coming up on him from behind. “Fortunately, we can stay on the road.”

The two of them went right down the road that ran along the north side of the Quad and towards Ocampo Dorm and Drake Hall.

“Wait, Alex!”

He half-turned his head and saw Kimberly and Nina running after them. “Hi!”

“Wow, I didn’t know you were such a lady’s man!” Danielle exclaimed.

Kimberly bent over and breathed deeply once she’d caught up. “Too much running.”

“Are you going down to Drake Hall too?” Nina asked.

“Yeah.”

“We have Home Ec there,” Danielle explained.

The two freshman girls brightened. “So do we,” Nina announced. “Let’s go together.”

“Sure,” Alex said with a shrug. “Why not?”

Danielle nodded. “Of course. We’re on the same corridor in Kingsley,” she added to Alex. “How did you get to know each other?”

“We got here on the same mini-bus.” Alex glanced at the time on his phone and wordlessly lengthened his stride.

“And now we have this class together,” added Kimberly in a pleased voice. “It’s great to know someone in the class already.”

“Why are you taking Home Ec?” Nina glanced at Alex. “Do you cook?”

He shrugged. “I can, a little. It seemed practical.”

“Well, it is,” Danielle agreed. “Although maybe not quite the way you’re expecting. This is AVM, after all.”

“How do you mean?”

She smiled mysteriously. “Well, it’s one of those classes that’s aimed a little more at mutants than the norms. I wanted to take it last year, but Dad insisted I took a couple of classes that turned out to clash with it.”

Alex rubbed the side of his forehead. How would Home Ec apply to mutants? It was stuff like cooking. Maybe some basic sewing and the like. So how did that apply here?

Entering Drake Hall they turned into the workshop section and Danielle led them up the stairs to the top floor. “They can’t put anything too heavy up here, the floors won’t take it because of the size of the workshops lower down. So there’s a bunch of oddball classes here that need special set-ups and don’t happen to fit over in Brule.”

The classroom was fairly large and Alex wasn’t all that surprised to see that there were some cookers against the wall. The tables were higher, more like kitchen benches than desk, with stools for students to sit at.

The teacher at the front got a second look from Alex. Most of the teachers he’d seen so far went out of their way to be presentable but this one was wearing jeans and a T-shirt more fitting to someone the age of her students. Greying blonde hair was up in a pony-tail, secured by no more than an elastic band.

She looked up at them and then waved the group of them towards the benches. “I know it’s your first day of Phys Ed, so thanks for turning up on time. I’ll cut you a little slack in future, but don’t take the piss.” That wasn’t the way any other teachers had spoken to them before and the freshmen gave her startled look.

“Is something wrong?” she asked them with a grin.

Danielle grabbed a stool and gestured for the others to join her, shaking her head slightly against questioning the teacher further.

More students came through the door – Alex recognised Tungarak and Hans Zeldte, who he realised was the fire projector from the squad skirmish that he’d just watched. A few moments later, Cong Feng and Qiu Sheng arrived.

“Okay, that’s it.” The teacher walked over and closed the door. “Just eight of you, one of our smaller classes. I’m beginning to feel unappreciated.” She went back to the front with a bouncy stride at odds with her apparent age. “I don’t think I need to take roll. If one of you shouldn’t be here, do find whoever is skipping and give them whatever notes you take.”

“So, let’s see… I’m teaching…” She picked up a clipboard. “Home Ec.” She paused. “Ec, for economics, if you don’t know. Something just as applicable to a shop or a household as it is to Wall Street. And just as applicable in turn to handling the practical issues of operating as a superhero or a team of them.”

Well, that gave some indication of what sort of a twist there would be to the class, Alex thought.

“My name’s Annette. Call me Ms. Putnam if there are other teachers around or if you really feel you have to be polite. As an alternative, I used to operate as Silver Shield. If we had house points here I’d give them for having heard of me – in the unlikely case any of you have.”

Danielle waved her hand.

“If any freshmen have heard of me,” Ms. Putnam corrected herself without batting an eyelid.

Danielle’s hand went down again.

“So, what are we going to cover? Let’s start by what you expect to be covering here,” Ms. Putnam jumped up to sit on one of the tables facing the students. “One at a time, what do you have in mind to do here?”

Cong Feng cleared his throat. “How to cook. Take out all the time is expensive.”

“I’m not gonna be teaching you haute cuisine,” the woman told them. “But we will be covering how to prepare quick meals suitable for someone who’s on the go. Which is how things go for a superhero or villain, a lot of the time. That’ll mean things that are quick to prepare, quick to eat and also reasonably nutritious. And because no one wants to live on tasteless crud, how to flavour them. Okay, someone else?”

“I’m going to have to fix my own clothes if they get damaged here,” Nina said after a moment. “I can’t exactly go to my Mom.” She paused. “Although Alex can, I guess.”

“Oh? Which of you is Alex?”

Alex raised his hand.

“Is your mom local?”

“No. I can teleport back home. Not that I plan too. It takes so long to get through customs.”

Ms. Putnam laughed. “Yeah, that’s a pain. Okay, good practical reason… Nina?” the girl nodded. “We will be covering how to do basic sewing and other clothes repair. Also, some design of clothes, because most people working in the supers field wind up creating their own costumes.” She made a depreciating smile. “You would not believe some of the clown suits I’ve seen people wear, presumably oblivious to what they look like. And one more?”

Alex glanced around and then shrugged. “I didn’t want to take a language class this semester.”

“Honesty. Rather brutal but fair enough. And what the hell. It’s half a credit towards your graduation.” The woman shrugged it off. “We’re going to start with costumes. Trust me, you’ll thank me for keeping something warm like cooking until later in the term.”

She pointed at Kimberly. “Honest question, what did you think when you first saw me?”

The girl hesitated.

“Come on, snap answer!”

“You don’t look like a teacher.”

Ms. Putnam snapped her fingers. “Exactly. We don’t think of teachers having a uniform but there are still expectations of how we’ll dress. It’s the same with a lot of other things: we expect people to be dressed to match their qualities, and similarly we also try to deduce qualities based on what people wear.”

“Are you sure you didn’t just screw up your laundry?” sneered Qiu Sheng

“One more thing we’ll be doing in class,” Ms. Putnam added, “is how to handle that. Surprisingly few of you kids seem to know how.”

“Oh, thank god,” Alex muttered and there was a ripple of laughter.

The teacher bowed her head in gracious acceptance of the compliment. “So no… Cong Feng.”

He stood up, looming over her. “Qiu Sheng.”

“Ah.” Ms. Putnam nodded without any sign that the Chinese boy towering over her had even been noticed. “Obviously, I do know my laundry. Actually, I’m just a slob. Any excuse not to have to dress up like I’m a responsible adult.” She looked over Qiu Sheng’s muscle shirt, wrapped around an admittedly muscular physique. “Now, Qiu Sheng. Since you’ve volunteered, what do your clothes say about you?”

Qiu Sheng stared at her and then looked down at himself. “That I’m strong,” the boy said in a tone that was half-questioning.

Ms. Putnam nodded sharply. “That is one thing, yes. Many physically powerful mutants like to show off their strength. Revealing clothes such as your shirt are associated with that, a tradition going back to non-mutant strongmen in early live entertainments. What else?”

“It’s a bit cheap,” Nina observed, drawing a glare from the boy. “The shirt, I mean. And with the jeans it’s a bit scruffy.”

“Also true. A distinctly blue-collar look – there are circumstances where it would suggest that Mr. Qiu is hard-working. Although…” she glanced at Qiu Sheng’s trainers. “If you want to give that impression, I suggest boots rather than trainers. Also, the implication of a cheap shirt is that it’s disposable and that you may expect it to be torn if you use your powers.”

Ms. Putnam shrugged. “Not saying that that’s the case, but it’s impression you’re giving. You can sit down again, you’re done being an example for the rest of the class.”

“Right.” He sat down slowly, as if trying to make it clear that he was doing so of his own will and not because the teacher told him to.

“If you’re going to costume up,” Ms. Putnam continued. “You should consider what you want to appear like. It’s also well worth considering how this may mesh with your codename. Does anyone have a codename in mind?”

“Black Paladin,” suggested Alex and then blinked as everyone stared at him. “What?”

“Given that that’s a well-known legacy, you’re being quite specific about your aspirations.”

“Oh! No, I don’t mean I want to be Black Paladin. Fuck that guy,” Alex added with quite a bit of venom. “No, I thought you wanted a name that ties into a costume. I mean, it’s not like he’d be walking around in a tux and turban.”

“I can think of one Black Paladin who could pull off a tux very well,” Ms. Putnam said a little nostalgically, “But that was a rather exceptional circumstance. You’re correct though. Predominantly the Black Paladins try to at least fake some semblance of medieval armour, usually trimmed in black. For reasons I hope are obvious.”

Nina raised one hand. “Has any Black Paladin ever been ethnically African?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” the teacher said flatly. “Look, they most often wear helmets and gauntlets. I couldn’t swear to them all being men. Using a colour is a very traditional way of creating a variety since, let’s be honest, many people don’t have a lot of imagination. Prefix your preferred codename with a colour, make sure you at least trim your costume in that colour and suddenly Black Paladin is entirely distinct from White Paladin, Green Paladin and the Ruby Paladin – no, not kidding, those are real codenames.”

“It’s kind of power rangers, isn’t it?” asked Kimberly.

“Where do you think they got the idea?” Annette spread her hands. “I did it myself, obviously. Silver Shield, which cashed in on the fact that my costume included a fair bit of metallic armour.” She pulled out her phone, pointed it at the wall and the device projected an image on it, one of a blonde woman in a silver exo-skeleton, a kite-shield on one arm. “So, what do you make of me?”

“That you didn’t need a helmet?” asked Tungarak.

“But a helmet would have crushed my fabulous hair,” Ms. Putnam responded and then shook her head. “In hindsight, I’m genuinely surprised I didn’t snap my neck back then. But yes, good point. The exo-skeleton was intended to deliberately downplay its protective qualities and suggest that it was primarily in use to provide me with other benefits – strength augmentation, for example. The shield is clearly my primary defense… which was actually garbage.”

Cong Feng pinched the bridge of his nose? “The shield was garbage? Or the idea that it was your main defence?”

The teacher smiled and Alex wasn’t above admitting that she was still gorgeous, despite the signs of aging. “Yes to both.”

“So it was mis-direction?”

“Absolutely.” She laid her phone on the table and walked over to the wall to point. “The shields were cheap rubbish – I couldn’t afford serious materials, I went through a dozen of them one year. The real shield I had – have, in fact – is a psychokinetic field around myself. The main purpose of the exoskeleton I wore was to magnify that. So one aspect of my name and costume was to draw attention away that. Because a power no one understands is a power that no one can easily counter.”

She paused for effect, “So, what else would you take away from it?”

“You’re very shiny,” suggested Danielle. “Bright and, I dunno, positive.”

“Absolutely right. Some mutants prefer to appear dangerous and intimidating, so they adopt darker colours and more imposing styles. I, on the other hand, wished to present myself as a heroic figure and a defender. In that context my shield specifically harkened back to the shields of knights, to give myself a chivalric association.” Ms. Putnam’s smile grew wistful for a moment. “The noble defender of the innocent. It’s an ideal that isn’t so popular these days, but I hope it never dies out entirely.”

She shook her head slightly. “So, it’s also worth tying them into your codenames. How many of you have them at this point?”

Only the three sophomores raised their hands and Ms. Putnam asked that they remind her of what they were. Tungarak was already known to Alex, but he hadn’t known that the horned boy had chosen it in reference to an old Central American legend. Danielle’s codename was Flashover, which she said was her father’s old codename, while Hans had responded with a quiet “Feuermacher”.

Alex knew enough German to guess that that meant ‘fire-maker’, not very imaginative but certainly accurate.

“While not everyone actually costumes up, let’s suppose for a moment that the three of you all plan to do so,” Ms, Putnam put forward. “What sort of costumes would fit with your codenames, your powers and with the images that you want to project through both of them?”

“Well, mine is a legacy,” Danielle pointed out. “So, my father’s costume would be a starting point.”

“A good point. One difference that you’d need to consider is that you are going to need a rather different structure to your costume.” The teacher grinned a little slyly. “I know there have been a lot of jokes about the ‘most common mutant power’ and about ‘costumed women stuffing their bras’, but there is a very important truth behind those jokes.”

She fiddled with her phone again and projected another image onto the wall. One outline of a man from the side and a second outline of a woman from the same outline. Circles outlined their groins and the woman’s chest. “Putting added padding into these parts of the costume is just plain sense. Any impact to them can be quite painful… at best. I’m sure at least one of you boys must have found that out at one time… and probably with something a good bit less violent than a mutant with super-strength and a propensity for fighting dirty.”

Alex cringed slightly at the very thought.

“It does happen,” Ms. Putnam observed. “The most infamous, of course, being Gigaton’s destruction of Captain Lightning in 1997. The amazing thing isn’t that Gigaton won – the Captain might have been one of the most powerful energy projectors around at the time but letting Gigaton get his hands on him was pure arrogance on his part – but that Captain Lightning survived, albeit retired for good and with no one taking up his legacy. One knee between the goalposts and…” She shrugged. “I happen to know that Captain Lightning was treated by a mutant with healing powers almost immediately, stabilising him long enough to get him to Dr. Franck. Between them, they saved his life but he was never able to leave a hospital bed again and if he didn’t have children before that, he certainly wasn’t going to afterwards.”

“That’s admittedly an extreme case and a little padding wouldn’t have made much difference there, but the point of armour isn’t to protect against everything, it’s to mitigate the damage that you’re most likely to take. And a kick to the groin or a punch to the breast can be quite enough to change the course of a fight so it’s best to be prepared.” Ms. Putnam hopped up onto the table again and crossed her legs. “And let’s be honest, a little extra padding in those areas is a little bit of a bolster to your appearance as well.”

There was a distinctly red tinge on Kimberly’s cheeks, Alex noticed.


	11. Setting Ground Rules (Also Sky Rules)

History was across in Konscak Hall so they crossed the main road to get to it. “I’m going to be in every one of the teaching buildings,” Alex noted to Danielle.

She nodded. “It’s not unusual with how they split the subjects up. It can be a bit frantic to get across the campus at times though – I envy the speedsters like Shoi-Ming, it’s much faster for them to get around.”

“My little legs are tired already,” Kimberly complained and then eeped as Tungarak picked her up and perched her on one broad shoulder.

“Then please spare them the effort,” he declared cheerfully.

The girl grabbed hold of the nearer of his horns and squeaked nervously. “I’m gonna fall!”

“No, you won’t,” he assured her.

“One of us will catch you if you do,” Daniele said a little more practically.

Hans Zeldte huffed slightly and went past them into Konscak Hall. Alex made a face as he looked at the german boy’s back. “I hope he isn’t in our World History class.”

“He is,” Tungarak rumbled. “Why, is that a problem?”

“I didn’t exactly get off on the best foot with his girlfriend,” Alex explained.

The large boy chuckled, which was an oddly gravelly sound. “You hit on Scorpia? Brave man.”

“No, I just had to retrieve her from the airport when she was detained for fighting her roommate in the terminal.”

“That makes a little more sense,” agreed Danielle and took Alex’s arm. “Fiona pretty much lives down to the stereotype of redheads having a fiery temper. And everyone knows she has Hans wrapped around her little finger.”

“Or other parts of her anatomy,” chortled Tungarak. “Ow,” he added in a proforma manner as Kimberly smacked the back of his head.

“Ow,” she agreed, shaking her hand. “What are you made off?”

“Some sort of sandstone from what the Doc says,” he told her. “Okay, gonna put you down now to go through the door. And to cut back on the abuse, but it’s mostly the door.”

The history class was on the ground floor and as the four of them entered the classroom, Alex thought it was a strange contrast to Home Economics, the room was packed. Then he realised that eight of the girls in the room were identical, the Indian girl from earlier having somehow multiplied.

“Excuse me,” one of the duplicates said, and seven of them filed out of the room, leaving just one.

Tungarak eyed the girl warily. “I think I speak for everyone when I say that that was a veritable multitude,” he declared. “Your power, I assume?”

“It is,” she agreed. “I’m going to try to take multiple classes this period. Dr. Camille gave me a provisional approval to try it.”

Kimberly took the open seat next to the girl. “Hi Than. Are you sure your head won’t explode with that much learning?”

“Well, not literally.” The girl smiled slightly. “It’s not clear how much I’ll retain from eight different classes, which is why it’s the only period I’ll be doing it this semester. But if it works…”

Alex raised both eyebrows as he and Danielle took the desk behind them. “Then you could take eight classes a time. For… well, Phys Ed is required. But forty-eight classes… twenty-four and a half credits in a semester? That’s enough to graduate by Christmas.”

“In theory, yes,” Than agreed. “Although by the summer, since such will not be approved unless all goes well this semester. And I still have to be here for four years. But it makes Hermione Granger look little time.”

“Small time,” Kimberly corrected.

“Small time.”

“I hope those words aren’t referring to me,” Ms. McGowrie said, entering the room. She glanced at her wristwatch. “Or suggesting that I’m being fashionably late to my own class.”

“No, just comparing Than’s class schedule to Hermione Granger’s.”

The teacher paused. “I… don’t follow.”

“The time turner thing in the third book,” Alex explained.

“Oh. Oh!” She shook her head. “Yes. Well, I hope you don’t get distracted,” she told Than. “And since classes build on each other, you’ll not be able to graduate this year.”

“Oh, I know.” Than smiled. “On the other hand, with enough electives I may be able to take the advanced placement classes in the future.”

“Ambition is good,” Ms. McGowrie agreed. “It’s shaped more of history, to tout my own subject for a moment, than almost anything else.” She went to her desk, checked her notes and then looked around, counting heads. “Do imagine a bell ringing. Class is now in session. For those I haven’t crossed paths with before, I’m your teacher for World History 1. My name is Heather McGowrie and I was born in the highlands of Scotland. As some of you may find out in Pys Ed, I am very good with a sword but I don’t favour the katana and I cannot hide a sword very well under a trenchcoat, I’m just too short.”

There was a ripple of laughter from those of the students familiar with the movies in question, which was less than half.

Ms. McGowrie sighed. “That’ll make more sense to the rest of you if you attend classic movie nights in your dorms. I’m fairly sure Highlander is on the usual rotation. That, however, is not quite the history we’ll be covering here. So, world history. There is a lot of history and as time progresses in a generally forwards direction, we keep accumulating it. In addition, a lot of very clever people keep digging backwards to find out more about what happened in the past, so this is definitely a growth subject. World History 1 will cover the most immediately relevant periods to your daily lives, the twentieth century. World History 2, which I expect most of you will take next Semester so you can note off the required credit on your resume, is a broader overview of the previous two thousand years.”

She went to a whiteboard behind her desk and drew a vertical line. “Okay, hands in the air everyone. I want one major event in the twentieth century from each of you. I’ll call on you, put your hand down when you’ve given me something. I suggest you have something in reserve because the obvious ones will go fast.”

“The world wars,” Danielle offered when she was called first.

“Debateable whether that’s a single event or not. Pick one.”

“Uh. World War Two.”

Ms. McGowrie drew a marker about halfway down the line and scribbled WW2 next to it. “Why that one?”

“I know a little more about it.”

“Ha, and you thought I might have a follow up question? Good reason.” She pointed at someone Alex didn’t know. “Do you want to pick up the easy option or surprise me?”

“World War One.”

“Dis-appoint-ing!” Ms. McGowrie declared in a terrible Kevin Sorbo impersonation as she added it near the top. “Next… Hans?”

“Berlin Wall coming down.”

“Good.” She added it.

More and more entries went down on the whiteboard as Ms. McGowrie went around the room. Alex thought he’d done pretty well by picking Dreadnought Race as he was one of the last people called. Several people had needed to think even after they were asked, due to more obvious choices being picked by those ahead of them.

“Interesting,” Ms. McGowrie said in response to his choice. “Since someone will probably get it mixed up with the Blue Ribbon, give me a ten-word summary.”

Alex paused, counted words and then said: “England and Germany competing over building the biggest battleships.”

“And your tenth word?”

“…fastest?”

“I’d have said cheapest, but fastest works.”

Ms. McGowrie finished going around the room and scanned the board. “Okay, good selection. You’ve picked up most of the topics we’ll be covering this year. And a few that we won’t be.” She took a red marker and ticked off a few options. “Sorry, JFK, you don’t belong here, that’s in US History next door. Next semester in fact, unless I have the topic list wrong.”

“Now, there is one biggie that you have missed.” She drew a line under the WW1 marked on the timeline. “Fits in right about here. What do we all have in common?”

“We’re all mutants,” Franklin Carstairs pointed out from the back row.

“Yep.” The teacher lowered her pen and made a dot next to Der Flieger. “The first known mutant to trigger is right here – although current thinking is that he was probably just the first to survive his trigger coma. An unrepentant Nazi to the last, unfortunately, but there was a lot of that going on at the time.”

“But, and here’s a question that bothered people for years, why did mutants start cropping up in the mid-to-late 1930s? Where do we come from? It took until the 1970s before what we now know as the mutagene – or sometimes the metagene - was identified and, even then, it’s taken a great deal of refinement of that data to test for it. Dr. Franck is one of the world’s leading authorities on the topic and he’s admitted that we have only the most basic understanding of how it affects mutants.”

Ms. McGowrie’s pen returned to the line she’d drawn earlier. “1918, the end of the Great War – World War One as we now know it. No mutant has ever been identified as being born before this point – which means there were almost certainly no mutants conceived before 1917 at the earliest. And yet, mutants sprang up all over the globe. So, what could have happened around that time that affected every continent, every nation on Earth? Anyone?”

Than Kyi raised her hand for permission to speak. “The plague?”

“Plague?” asked Kimberly in surprise. “Was there a plague in 1917.”

“Ms. Miyako, to merely call it a plague is to understate it,” the teacher said solemnly. “You didn’t mention this earlier, Ms. Kyi?”

“No.” Than shook her head. “It didn’t spring to mind.”

Ms. McGowrie nodded. “It was a little before my time but even then, it wasn’t something that people liked to think about, much less talk about. A taboo topic, effectively. Outside the medical profession, at least. For which we should all be deeply grateful, because a great many doctors and researchers took what they had learned during those years and thought very deeply about what they could do to make sure that it never happened again.”

“For the majority of you, this is probably new material. What we’re discussing is usually referred to as the Spanish Pandemic. Despite the name it actually began in Austria, in 1917, where it played no small part in depleting the manpower available to the Central Powers. As the war ended, soldiers returned home and trade began to normalise, which spread the disease further. The pandemic wasn’t the worst in history – I imagine that you’ve all heard of the Black Death, which had a vastly higher deathtoll, but it was bad enough.”

She set down her pen. “Conservatively, close to half a billion people caught the Spanish Flu at some point between 1917 and 1920. Approximately one in ten died… so around fifty million dead. Roughly speaking, that’s about as many as would die in the Second World War – very significantly more than the deathtoll of the First World War.” Ms. McGowrie looked around the room, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “No mutant has ever been identified that doesn’t have at least one ancestor among those who survived the Spanish Flu. At this point it is virtually certain that the mutagene is the result of some – at the time quite unknown – effect that the disease had on the reproductive cells of those who were infected.”

She paused and let that sink in.

“And yet… most of you had never heard of it.”

Alex flushed slightly.

“That’s not a criticism,” Ms. McGowrie said matter-of-factly. “You’re students, you’re supposed to be learning new things in this class. But one challenge that I sometimes face in this class is students who don’t feel that world history affects them. Not as much as the history of their own home country. And no, it’s not just Americans who believe that.”

“There may have been a time when that was true. But we live in a much smaller, more globalised world. Very few events that are on this list affect just one country or nation. And they’re almost always entangled with other events. To a considerable degree, the study of history is a matter of studying connections between people, places and events that may lead to and result from those people and places.”

“So. What connections can we find from the Spanish flu? Anyone?”

“Do we know what caused the flu?” asked Kimberly.

Ms. McGowrie shook her head. “No, but it’s a good question. There are theories, but we don’t know for the sure. The leading theory is that it was a mutation of some existing disease but there have been other theories. I’m not saying that aliens…” She made airquotes around the word. “did it, but we know there are non-human sapients, with their own agendas. And who knows? I don’t know why they would do it, but why would a disease somehow give superpowers to the children of survivors in the first place? There are a lot of unanswered questions Okay, let’s divide this up – if we don’t have a connection backwards, what about forwards?”

“All of us?” asked Danielle.

“Obviously, yes. And it’s hard to say how the modern world would be different if this hadn’t happened, creating mutants. Which hasn’t prevented a lot of people from theorising. And that’s a connection no one realised at the time, not until a new generation grew up and started manifesting. Sometimes connections aren’t obvious until sometime later. There’s a famous quote by one of the last Chinese foreign ministers before the collapse of Communist China. Zhou Enlai declared that it was too soon to tell what the impact of the French Revolution had been, almost two hundred years before the question was posed to him.”

“We’ll see more of Zhou Enlai later in the course as we deal with Mao’s Great Leap Forward.” Ms. McGowrie pointed at it on the timeline. “He was quite a significant figure in the expatriate Chinese community. But back on topic, in addition to looking back and forwards, what connections were there to events at the same time?”

“Um… World War One?” asked Alex.

“Indeed. But can you guess how?” she asked him.

“You said that it spread due to the trade resuming after the war was over? And soldiers going home.”

Ms. McGowrie nodded. “That’s true. Mind you, Europe was already very interconnected. But if soldiers from America, India, Africa and even Japan weren’t being shipped home then the spread might have been much slower.”

“Wouldn’t that have meant that mutants might have been much more concentrated in Europe?” asked Than Kyi.

“Indeed so,” agreed Ms. McGowrie. “And all that happened because the Serbians were desperate to prevent the Austrians from integrating their Serbian population closer into the Empire and therefore undermine their dreams of a greater Serbia… they got their way, by the way. They were allied with Russia, and therefore with British and French, which meant they were on the winning side – don’t let anyone tell you that being the aggressor in war is a bad idea.”

“But we’re getting off topic.” She looked at them. “The flu prompted some major advances in how we study disease today, so let’s move on to that…”

* * *

Perhaps because of the unsettling subject of discussion in history, it took a moment for Alex to realise what was odd about the teacher for physics.

“…does he turn into a person too?” he asked Danielle under his breath, nodding to the gorilla visible in the back room of the science lab, as the pair of them found seats just across from the table occupied by Thomas and Larry.

She looked at the door. “Nope!” she said proudly. “That’s Dr. Silverback. He’s an uplifted gorilla.”

“Who would uplift a gorilla?”

“Someone,” the teacher answered as he walked back into the room, “With far too much time on their hands. Not that I should complain, I suppose. I consider myself part of the African expatriate community, although alas the reverse is not always the case.”

Dr. Silverback didn’t sound like a gorilla… although Alex had to admit that he was at a loss, once he had a moment to think about it, as to what he would expect a gorilla to sound like when speaking English. So perhaps the answer was that they sounded like Dr. Silverback, which was to say, as if they were from somewhere in the north-eastern USA. It fit with the cleverly tailored sweater and pants he wore under a labcoat.

“I know,” the teacher said, pulling himself up onto a stool facing the class, “That this is the last class of the day. Your first day back, hmm? A bit of a struggle and dinner is up ahead. But bear with me… or ape with me, if you rather.”

No one laughed at the joke although there was a snicker from somewhere at the back when Dr. Silverback pulled a bunch of bananas out from behind his desk. “Anyone want a banana? I’m having one.”

Danielle raised her hand and the simian teacher plucked one banana from the bunch and flung it casually across the room to her. “What was that?” he asked.

“A banana?” she asked, looking at it curiously.

“No… well, yes.” He peeled his own and took a bite. “Mmm. But it was also physics. One object, put into motion with one force and under the influence of another, describing a parabola through space… and you, young lady, calculated all that and managed to correctly determine where to put your hands to catch it. Well done.” He took another bite – he’d devoured half the piece of fruit in just two bites. “Oh, do remember to use the bin when you’re done with the peel,” Dr. Silverback added thoughtfully. “Don’t make life hard for the cleaners. Or leave it on the floor and cause an accident. Those are funny in cartoons but not so much in real life.”

“I just caught it,” Danielle admitted. “I didn’t do any calculations.”

“Of course, you did.” Silverback finished the banana. “You’re just so used to it that you didn’t notice. Just like this.” He tossed his banana peel into the bin. “Physics is fundamentally describing and understanding things like this that we see every day, although we can then use that understanding to apply to things we see less often and don’t yet comprehend.”

He slapped his hands together. “Now, last session was probably… history for most of you. Very apt. So, question. What was determined first? The speed of sound… or the speed of light? Everyone’s okay with the idea that those two things have speeds, I hope?”

There were no protests raised so he nodded approval. “Any suggestions? There are only two possible answers, which is nice and easy.”

“Sound?” asked Alex. It was slower, so that seemed likely.

“Why?” Dr. Silverback tossed a banana towards him. “Have a banana, by the way. I like it when people are willing to risk being wrong.”

Alex wasn’t a huge fan of bananas, but it would be rude to turn it down. “Uh, because it’s slower and easier to measure?”

“That’s reasonably logical. Wrong, unfortunately, but if you don’t first advance a hypothesis, you can’t test it. Don’t be afraid of being wrong.”

Dr. Silverback opened up a laptop. “Determining the speed of something requires exact calculations of time and distance. When it was first established that sound had a speed, it was by observing distant events and recognising that the sound arrived after sight of them. So much, so good. But now to measure it?”

“With a clock.”

“Correct. They used cannon, incidentally. Firing them from one hill and then, a measured distance away, noting the time it took to hear the sound as compared to the time that it took to hear it at other distances.” Dr. Silverback smiled, baring an impressive number of teeth. “The results were garbage, unfortunately. Distance didn’t seem to make a consistent difference. The problem was partly that their clocks weren’t very accurate, they hadn’t accounted for things like air pressure and so forth, and also that the speed was very much higher than they had envisaged. They had the basic idea right though.”  
“So, how did they establish the speed of light? After all, much much faster than the speed of sound. The time it takes light to reach any practical distance allowed for by the Earth’s ”

Xiang Ho raised his hand cautiously. “If they couldn’t measure over short distances, did they use long distances?”

“Exactly right.” Another banana sailed over the class. “Guess what distance they used?”

Larry raised his hand. “Astronomical.”

“Oho! Very good, yes. They actually compared the movement of Jupiter’s moons. The timing they were seeing those movements was varying through the year from what the models they had developed. But when they checked, the times when it lagged were when Jupiter was further away. So, determine how much of a difference the distance made and there you have time and space figures and thus, the speed of light.” Dr Silverback threw a banana at Larry who caught it, looked at it, and passed it to Thomas.

“Same method,” he continued. “Just applied to a different circumstance. There’s no fundamental difference in the logic. Thus, the logic used for one physics problem is also applicable to other problems of the same issue. You may need to adjust to the practical circumstances, but the basic idea will still be sound. The universe is basically fair in that way. Rather nice.”

* * *

“Are you okay?” asked Danielle as Alex finished his dessert at dinner. “You’ve been nose deep in homework since you started eating.”

“I’m sorry, was I shortchanging you on attention?” he asked mildly.

She smiled. “Not too badly for this stage in our relationship, Mr. McKenzie. But don’t let it get ahead of you.”

“I’ll be sure not to,” he said, not sure if she was joking or not. Relationship? Was she implying…?

“Are you going to reverse-Hikaru Genji him?” asked Mei.

Danielle gave her a puzzled look. “I have no idea what that means, but it sounds filthy.”

“It is an utter classic of literature,” the Chinese girl asserted and then winked. “But it is Japanese, so yes, it is filthy.”

“I’m pretty sure that not all Japanese literature is filth,” Alex observed mildly. “But I have yet to find any. The quest continues.”

Mei laughed and held out one hand. “High five.” Alex complied.

“I probably don’t want to know what you’re talking about, but I know a change of the subject when I hear one,” Danielle declared. “You’ve had your tablet open since we got here, working at homework. Are you struggling with class? I know you’ve been moved up to be in English and Math with me.”

“I’m not struggling,” he assured her. “I just don’t know how much time I’ll have this evening for it so I’m getting it out of the way.”

She batted her eyes. “You have plans this evening? Is there a party that someone hasn’t told me about?”

“No… but my student job crops up and I have no idea yet if I’ll have any time for homework. I might, but I just don’t know.”

“Who are you with?”

“I don’t know that either. I’m just to report to security.” He checked his maths answers one more time and sent the work in by email, then started closing down the apps.

“It kind of sucks that they’re dragging you in on a Monday evening when you spent most of the weekend working as well.”

Alex shrugged. “I think that that’s mostly going to be an exception while they got me up to speed. They might want to have me learn extra destinations in the future, but I guess it probably won’t be until they have a better idea of what my limits are.”

“So,” Philip asked, having come over to eat dinner with his sister, the other sophomores and by extension with Alex, who’d been more or less sucked into their circle. “Where can you teleport to so far?”

“Uh. Well, here, obviously. Winnipeg airport. Couple of places in Moorhead and Fargo. The same for Minneapolis and St. Paul. Manchester.”

“In New Hampshire?”

“No, in England.”

“You have a Manchester there as well?”

“Yes. And home, which is a little town up in the mountains.”

“There are mountains in England?” asked Danielle impishly. “Who knew?”

Alex rolled his eyes. “Yes. They’re not exactly the Rockies, but there are definitely mountains.”

“So, you’ll be stuck with security all evening. That’s a shame.”

“I imagine I’ll have an evening free at some point to go poking around the other world if you want. It’s a bit wet and cold sometimes but…” Alex squinted at the windows that let the light through into the dining hall, windows that were now splattered with rain. “That’s nothing out of the ordinary here I suppose.”

Danielle nodded. “We should make an expedition of it. Proper walking boots, coats and everything.”

“Rucksacks with food in case I for some reason can’t bring you back.”

“…can we schedule it right before the mid-terms?”

“If you want to wait more than a month and potentially upset every teacher we have, yes. Although if that many people are going along then we might need a teacher along. I already told you at lunch that I’d ask about that.”

Mei shrugged. “You don’t actually have to tell teachers every time you use your powers.”

“You may not,” Alex said, “But practically by definition, I’m leaving campus every time I use mine. Granted I don’t tell them every time, but if I’m going to be away for longer than it takes to come out somewhere else on campus, then I probably should.”

“Don’t invade Canada,” Philip said and nodded sagely.

“Why would he?”

“He shouldn’t,” he told his sister. “It’s literally in the school rules. Don’t invade Canada again.”

Danielle’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute… Alex?”

“Yes?”

“You could have teleported us from one class to the next all day. No having to walk from building to building, no cold wind…”

“It’s not a particularly cold day.”

“That’s not the point.”

“And I can only really take one person unless I go back and forth.”

“Dibs.” She grabbed his arm teasingly, although she let go after a moment.

Alex sighed, glanced around and got no indications of support. “I’m sure a little exercise isn’t a bad thing, Danielle,” he said patiently. “Now if the weather’s bad or we’re running late…”

Suzy shook her head. “It’s like you don’t want to go off privately with a girl,” she theorised. “Do you not like Danielle?”

What was he supposed to say to that!?

“Suzy!” Danielle exclaimed.

“What? I would like a private place I could… go for walks with Jimmy,” the Thai girl said pleasantly. “A romantic walk in the woods around here just isn’t the same.”

“The wildlife in the other world can be a bit aggressive,” Alex pointed out.

“Same here, at least if you include other students.” Suzy threw an irritated look up at the mezzanine but wasn’t any more specific about who she meant.

“I’ll let you know what I find out about an expedition to explore it,” Alex said, checking the time on his phone. “But for now, I’d better go.” He put his tablet away in his bag and pushed back his chair.

“See you later, Alex,” Danielle promised.

Alex nodded and walked to the door. When he glanced back he saw that Philip had moved seats to sit next to his sister.

Getting to security was pretty easy since it was also in Quesada. Alex walked through the connecting atrium to the admin wing. He wondered vaguely for a moment what was between the two wings – there was clearly some dead-space, but neither side had windows looking into it and there was no door from the atrium. Maybe Larry would be up to fly over and have a look.

The man behind the security desk recognised him when he entered. “Hi kid. You here for Colton?”

“Yes sir.”

“Heh, nice to have someone a bit respectful here.” The man beckoned to him. “Come round here and you can wait by the snack machines. No use leaving you sitting out there like you’re in trouble.”

The snack machines were where Alex had last found them, no surprise there, and he sat down on the couch. After giving Mr. Colton five minutes, he pulled out his tablet again and opened up the reading for English. He’d skimmed through it over dinner, but there was no harm in a second look and he could read ahead a bit even if he didn’t know if all of it would be set.

It was another quarter hour before Mr. Colton arrived. “Evening, McKenzie,” the man told him and gave him an apologetically. “That homework?”

“Yes.” Alex closed it down.

“Are you for real? You’re polite, you’re on time, you’re doing your homework without prompting… did Dr. Franck whip you up in his lab and someone forgot to tell me?”

Alex gave him a look. What?

“Yeah, you’re right. He’d never forget to tell me if he was doing illegal cloning experiments.” Mr. Colton laughed briskly and gestured for Alex to follow him. “Anyway, sorry about the wait, things come up unexpectedly sometimes.”

“I guess that that comes with the job.”

The big man nodded as they walked back to the exit. “You’re damned right. Pardon my French. Anyway, we don’t have a specific plan to hop you anywhere today. We’re gonna have to figure out how to organise that since a lot of the time it’ll be short notice or emergencies, so whether we just keep you on speed dial or there’s a regular schedule for you to turn up is up in the air at the moment. Do you have any thoughts? They’re your powers.”

He thought a bit as he followed Mr. Colton out of the admin wing and towards the coast road up around Kingsley, more or less unexplored territory as far as he was concerned. The girl’s dorm looked very much like Ocampo and he guessed it was probably laid out in much the same way.

“I don’t know what sort of things you’ll be wanting me for,” he said at last. “If it’s emergencies, I’m guessing you can call me out of class.”

“Yeah, we can send out a McKenzie signal or something. Do you have a codename yet?”

Alex shook his head.

“That joke would have worked much better if you had one. Get that sorted.” Mr. Colton was grinning so he decided that that was probably a joke. “We have your schedule, so we’ll probably call your teacher if you’re in class. If not… well, keep your phone on you between classes. Hopefully there won’t be many emergencies, but we might need to do a pick-up of someone being brought to the hospice or something of that nature.”

“I’m not sure if I could get someone on a stretcher across,” Alex admitted.

“Hmm. How about a wheelchair?”

He thought a moment. “Maybe?”

“We’ll want to find out then. Or a gurney.”

“A gurney?”

“One of those beds on wheels they use to move people around in hospitals.”

Alex nodded to show that he understood.

“If weight’s the limiting factor we can get lightweight ones ready to use with patients.” Colton reached the end of the road as it turned around the back of Kingsley Dorm and picked his way up a path into the forest beyond.

Alex eyed the muddy path with distaste but followed, trying to make sure he had sound footing. “Is there anything more routine?”

“Two things,” Colton agreed. “The first is mail. Right now, we have to pick up the school’s mail when we take the hovercraft across to Warroad, which can mean a day or two’s delay – worse if the weather means we can’t cross the lake. Same for any snail mail we send, of course. But Cateran says she took you by the main post office in Moorhead.”

“Uh, Cateran? Do you mean Ms. McGowrie?”

The big man turned and looked embarrassed. “Her codename. My bad. She took you there, right.”

“Yes.”  
“Okay. So, we’re figuring on you going there once a day to pick up mail for us and drop some off. We have a post office box there, so that’s no problem. You can’t sign for it though, so someone’ll need to go with you.”

“Is that every day?”

“Weekdays, anyway. Didn’t you ever have a paper round where you come from?”

“It’s not really a thing, at least not these days.”

Mr. Colton shrugged. “Fair enough.” He paused and looked at the path ahead. “I didn’t figure the weather would be this wet, hang on and I’ll fly us the rest of the way.” He reached back and wrapped his arm around Alex’s chest.

A moment later they were flying, entirely different from how the helicopter had done it. There was no discernible effort as the red-headed security chief carried Alex further through the forest, following the lakeside until they reached the promontory south of the school.

“The other thing we’ll want you to do,” he explained as they flew. “Is occasionally run staff members out to the nearby cities. That’ll be pretty regular. Friday nights, mostly. And maybe picking them up on Sundays. We’ll need to figure out a schedule.”

They touched down on the far side of the trees, near the point. “Do you see that tree?” asked Mr. Colton. He pointed at the stump of a tree near the edge of the cliff.

Alex realised it must be the one that Hobbit had pointed out on the tour. “Yes.” He hesitated. “Someone told me that you punched a student through it.”

“Yeah. Tuwi-Shande. I wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t know nshe could take it, and that it was probably the only way to get her away from the rest of the campus before she smashed someone.” Colton put Alex down. “I can carry you over here without breaking your ribs. Or I can smack a girl hard enough she flies a mile. One of those two is easier than the other, can you guess which?”

Alex gulped.

“That wasn’t a threat. Although, while we are on the topic, if you start using your power to get somewhere you shouldn’t – like into the girls’ dorms, for example – then when I find out you had better plan on moving to that other world of yours long term. Believe me that anything I do would be measured to stop even crueller retribution from the House Mothers.”

“I honestly hadn’t considered that.”

“Really?”

“Not the dorms, no.” Alex frowned. “Of course, now that you mention the idea…”

Mr. Colton looked unconvinced. “Hmm. Well, consider that off-limits. Same with the Hospice Wards. If you need to take someone there then you’ll be handing them off to medical care at the entrance, if you just hop inside to one of the other rooms then you could interrupt medical care and that would be bad.” He looked out over the lake again. “Hopping around the campus is fine, but I do need to make this clear: we have a much better idea of where our students are than we usually let on. I’m not going to tell you how, but it’s a fact. So, if you were to have left the campus without permission…” he trailed off. “We might not be able to prove it, but we would have a pretty good idea. You understand?”

Shit. They knew he’d gone home.

“With permission is fine. In fact, since we’ll want to get a feel for what you can do, it’ll be encouraged. But as a general rule, we’re going to want someone to go with you. At least far enough that we’re sure you’ve arrived in the right country, gone through customs, all that sort of thing. One of the reasons you’re here is that your particular powers make you a little bit of a target. We promised your parents we’d look after you… which is difficult if you’re running around the world without our knowledge. You get it?”

“I get it, sir.” Alex didn’t want to meet Mr. Colton’s eyes but the man reached over, pinched his chin between thumb and forefinger and raised his head until it was unavoidable. They looked at each other for a moment and then the chief released his hold. “Good.”

“Why did you bring me out here to tell me that?”

Mr. Colton grinned again, the moment having passed. “I’m reasonably sure we’re out of the reach of the various students with extra-sensory perceptions and the like. Privacy can be harder to come by on campus than you might imagine. One or two of them are happy to snitch to us, which leads me to believe they’ll happily snitch to their friends and so… well, the gossip around here can be pretty bad.”

“It’s a school.” Alex knew his tone was a touch disrespectful, but the redhead was being fairly obtuse if he expected anything else with this many teenagers in one place.

“True. I once described the place to Dr. Franck as a place to intern teenagers and impose arbitrary tests on them without their parents complaining, but I don’t think he got the joke.”

“Was he offended?”

The big man threw back his head and a booming laugh sounded across the bay. “Oh, he was all in favour of the idea.” He slapped Alex on the back, a little harder than the boy liked. “Well, you can’t be good at everything and if the Doc gave up his sense of humour for his medicine, I doubt he feels hard done by.”

Alex shrugged. “Oh, I was going to ask. Some of the other kids were curious about the other world. Am I okay to take them across as long as we don’t go anywhere else?”

“Hmm.” Mr. Colton rubbed his jaw. “It’s technically off campus. How many are you thinking?”

“Six to ten, depending.”

“Huh. And when would this little exploration be taking place?”

That didn’t sound like a refusal.

Mr. Colton looked out over the lake for a moment. “Let’s have a look. Take us across now.”

“Right now?”

“That’s what I said.”

Alex shrugged and reached out to grasp the security man’s hand. One step and they were in the great hall of the castle. He’d made sure to go back there in the otherworld before classes today, not wanting to default back to the room he’d deemed to be ‘his’ room in the more private parts of the castle if Mr. Colton wanted him to collect someone again.

The redhead looked around. “Your own little fortress of solitude,” he mused. “Is there a way out?”

“Yes, sir.” Alex opened the door and led him down out of the hall and down through the castle to the main door. It was padlocked – Mr. McKenzie had fitted hasps on either side for it. The boy found the key in his pocket and unlocked it, then once they were both outside he secured the door again and locked it.

“Are you worried about someone finding you here?”

“I have no idea,” Alex admitted. “The lock’s mostly to keep animals out of the castle. When we found it the door was sealed and it makes sense to keep it somewhat secure. There’s nothing really stopping someone determined from opening it if they pry the hasp off.”

“True enough.”

It was early morning here, the sun low over the horizon in the direction that had been determined as east during earlier visits.

Mr Colton glanced around and saw the bridge, turning and striding towards it. “I want to get a wider view of the area, do you know if it has boundaries?”

“We haven’t found any so far. Triumph flew up and said he didn’t see any limits… there was a horizon so this might be an entire planet.”

“…and you’re the only one who can get back and forth. You have no idea what you’re sitting on, do you?”

Alex blinked. “Well, I’m guessing I’m not the only one to have come here.” He pointed at the castle as evidence.

Mr. Colton shook his head. “If you could create a permanent entrance then you have what amounts to billions, perhaps trillions of dollars’ worth of real-estate. An entire world. God.”

“If I could.” Alex shrugged dismissively.

The man chuckled and knelt to examine the bridge. “Good workmanship. The cement has worn but not enough to worry about, at least for now. Might be worse if there had been traffic.” He held out his hand to Alex. “Let’s have a look from above.”

“You’re going to carry me again?”

“Can you fly here?”

“No.”

“Well then. I’m not leaving you alone down here – you might run into another giant pork chop and that didn’t go so very well last time.”

“I could go back… but that would leave you here.”

Mr. Colton gave him a thin smile. “I’d rather not wait around for you to remember to come and get me. We don’t know for sure that it’s safe for someone to be here without you.”

“My stuff’s been fine.”

“Stuff and people might be two very different things.” He grabbed hold of Alex. “Comfortable?”

Alex considered the other possible ways he could be carried – bridal carry, fireman carry – and decided this was as good as he was going to get. “It’ll be fine.”

Without so much as jumping off, Mr. Colton rose up into the sky and Alex dangled from his arm. They flew higher this time and he was uncomfortably aware that if he fell then he’d probably hit the ground and go splat. Which would trap Mr. Colton here, but that only meant he wouldn’t be dropped by accident. Alex gripped the man’s arm and wasn’t sure if he should be comforted or not that the redhead didn’t seem bothered at all.

From above, the castle was clearly at the eastern edge of its island, itself the furthest to the east of at least three large islands that enclosed the bay. Mr Colton turned slowly in the air, looking all around them. “I don’t see any smoke or anything to suggest someone’s here,” he said after a moment. “We’ll go along the islands and get an idea what we’re dealing with.”

Moving westwards, it was apparent that there had been a town here at some point – the western end of the islands formed two smaller bays, the larger facing south to the sea and the smaller west at the next island along. Both had buildings around them, though unlike the castle, the roofs had mostly collapsed.

“Might have been that they had thatched roofs,” Colton noted. “There’s another small castle there at the far end of the island. This may have been quite the port at some point.”

“I don’t see any ships. Or much of a quay.”

“Ships don’t last forever in water, even if they’re metal hulled. Wooden ones…” Colton’s shrug left Alex feeling queasy as he himself was shaken. “Oops. Or maybe when whoever made this left, they took the ships with them. Wooden quays might have collapsed. It’d be interesting to get an archaeologist to look at this.”

“Do you want to look at the castle?” Unlike the previous one, which had a large cruciform keep, this one was made up of several lower round towers interlocked in an arc that was closed off by a rectangular hall that faced over the bay.

Mr. Colton shook his head. “Perhaps another time.”

They crossed the strait to the next island. “Looks deep enough for a decent sized ship to get through,” the redhead noted absently. The next island didn’t seem to have been settled – it was shorter but broader than the last one, rising to a higher hill in the centre. It was only after they got past it that the two of them saw more buildings on both sides of the next strait. “There’s a little anchorage on the other side,” Mr. Colton noticed. “But I wouldn’t think much of a ship could get across into the bay here. I’m surprised there’s not another bridge.”

“Maybe there just wasn’t a need.”

“Could be. No castle here. I wonder if the castle back at the last strait served as a lighthouse.”

“It wouldn’t be very tall.”

“You’re thinking of the large ones we get these days. Back in medieval times there were much smaller ones.”

They flew across and Mr. Colton gained altitude. It didn’t make Alex feel better although he supposed he would be dead anyway. It was apparent that this was the largest island and it curved northwards towards the western end of the bay. Looking north, Alex could see the bay had opened up. “How far do you think it is to the other shore?”

The security chief turned and eyed it measuringly. “A mile or so, perhaps. It’s a pretty good anchorage, but I don’t know how easy it’d be to get a sailing ship in or out.”

Other than the eastern tip, Alex didn’t see more buildings below him, but that might be due to the greater height. This island was more overgrown than the first.

“Probably no really large animals here,” Mr. Colton guessed. “They could use the bridge to just walk across onto the one with the castles. Not so much for this one.”

The far end of the island trailed off into smaller islands but the gap between them and the mainland was still broad and visibly deeper than the other straits they’d crossed. To Alex’s surprise, the mainland side was a promontory, sticking out perhaps half a mile from the shore – to the north of it was more sea.

“We’re probably on the south-western edge of a continent or maybe a much larger island,” Colton decided. “If we still had a sailing club at the school, they might want to try exploring this place by boat.”

“There was a sailing club?”

“Yeah, but their boats were out of the water for the winter when the club buildings got demolished,” the man explained. “Smashed to kindling unfortunately, since the sheds we used for them were up behind the club buildings. Unless someone specifically donates for them, we’re not going to getting more sailboats.”

Alex nodded. “I heard a little about that.”

“Unless they see it, most people don’t have any idea what a brawl between mutants can be like. We could lose half a dorm in the time it takes security to get a team to one. It’s why the dorm parents have extraordinary latitude when it comes to shutting down fights.” The man shook his head. “How did we get onto this topic? Never mind. You can take us back now.”

“Uh…” Alex paused. “I’d rather not.”

Mr. Colton glared at him. “What?”

“If I do then I’ll come back right here. As in, this high up.”

“Ah. And well away from your home away from home.”

“That too. I don’t think anyone really wants me to have to walk back along the islands. Even if it was just a couple of miles.”

“You’d be better sticking to the mainland. Maybe three miles walk but you wouldn’t need to cross to straits.” Mr. Colton dove suddenly and they were skimming above the waves as he rocketed eastwards across the bay.

Alex cried out in surprise and heard the man laugh. “Relax, I have you.”

“I’m getting flashbacks to the Dambusters!”

“Pansy,” the man joked but he slowed, a little. “Okay, I don’t think there’s likely to be much out here that’s a serious threat to a bunch of our students. Who do you have in mind?”

“Uh, Danielle Beaudoin, her brother Philip. Jimmy and Suzy…”

“Ah, them. Okay. I’m sure with those four along there’s enough firepower to handle wild animals, whoever else is with you. Definitely want an adult along those.”

Alex didn’t say anything. He didn’t disagree, after all. The way Suzy and Jimmy were, he wouldn’t be surprised if they came along just to find somewhere private and… well, what they did in private wasn’t his business but the school did technically prohibit students from having sexual relations.

“The exact rule says that we’ll punish students getting caught having sex,” Mr. Colton said, his own mind going the same way. “Being somewhere that there are literally no staff is far too obvious a loophole for me not to close it.”

“Fair enough.”

“Let me know when and who, say one day in advance and I’ll make sure someone is available to go along. If you want this to be a regular thing then we’ll revisit the arrangements. Has anyone been in touch about power testing yet?”

“Not yet.” They were skimming up the narrow end of the bay now and Alex saw the bridge closing rapidly.

Mr Colton flew them under the bridge arch - just to show off, Alex was sure – and then looped up and back to land on it. “They’ll probably want to map this place out as much as they want to work out what your constraints are with coming back and forth.”

“And then what? Launch a satellite to survey the entire planet?”

The security teacher snorted. “You think you’re joking, but there’s a kid in Kingsley who could fly one up from here. Or I could go to my maximum altitude and try to throw one high enough to get it past escape velocity.”

“Is that possible!?” Alex exclaimed.

“Only for something very small and very sturdy. It might make for an interesting project to throw at the workshop. I’ll have the idea added to your profile.”

“Okay…”

Mr. Colton let go of him. “You get used to looking at ideas around here with a view to the resources open to having two hundred plus mutants around. Outside the school they won’t be quite as accessible, but if you stay in contact… Only a small percentage of the mutants alive ever come here, but if you stay in touch with other students when you leave, you’ll be several steps fewer by separation from mutant communities all around the world.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, if you wanted to put a business proposal to someone in the Immortal Emperor’s court, for example, you could probably get a message to him directly via the school. I’m not suggesting that you do that unless you’re very serious, of course. But it’s possible. And that’s just one of our alumni. There are many many others. If your roommate grows up to join one of the CATs on the west coast, you’ll have ways to contact those for the rest of your lives.”

“Cats?” Alex hadn’t really considered Thomas as a cat-lover.

“Covert Action Teams. Blanket term for mutant teams regardless of which side of the law they work on. Handy when some of them straddle that line.” Mr. Colton glanced around one last time. “Okay, take us home.”


	12. Field Trip Part 1 (Watch That First Step)

Thomas wasn’t in their room when Alex got back, so he settled down to get more of the reading done for English. The book list for the class wasn’t all that long so he figured he could at least skim through them over the next couple of weeks and be broadly familiar with them by the time they actually came up in class. A couple of them looked like heavy going so better to start now.

A couple of hours later he took a break and used the bathroom. When he came back, the door was open. “I don’t know where he vanished off to,” Thomas was saying.

“Who are you looking for?”

“You!” Thomas pointed at him.

“Me?”

The tall boy pressed his phone back to his ear. “Just found him!”

“I wasn’t aware I was missing.”

There were footsteps outside and then Larry entered. “Alex, where have you been?” he asked, just a touch sharply. “You missed a squad meeting.”

“There was a squad meeting? No one said anything.”

“Well we were going to, but then you booked it out of Physics, avoided us at dinner…”

Alex reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. There was a distinct lack of messages. “I wasn’t avoiding you.”

Larry took a deep breath. “We need to work on our communication, obviously.”

“I had to go to my student job anyway.” Alex looked at the time. “I got here about half past seven.”

Thomas slapped his forehead. “I check the libraries, the study room… but for the first time this week you were hanging out in our room.”

“…well, homework reading?”

“On the first day?”

Alex shrugged.

“No offense, blondie, but you’re a bit of a try hard.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what Thomas meant by that, so he shrugged. “No offense taken. So, what was the meeting about?”

Larry sat down on Alex’s bed. “Options for Phys Ed. Obviously we can’t just stick to the basic exercise sessions if we’re going to be the best squad.”

“Fair enough.”

“Also, we can book practise time in the evenings after dinner, but we’d better get a booking in fast before the older years book them up. How much time is this student job of yours going to take up?”

“The current plan is Tuesday evening, Friday evening and Sunday morning, maybe an hour each. I’m on call twenty-four, seven though.”

“Not so bad,” Thomas admitted. “I figured it’d be closer to eight hours through the week, that’s how the guy working the till in the school shop puts in.”

“Depends on what emergencies arrive and it might change as they get used to me being around,” Alex admitted. “The current plan is subject to change.”

Larry nodded in understanding and pulled out his phone. “Okay, Mary asked around and got some information. Do you know any martial arts?”

Alex considered a handful of one-afternoon Judo sessions at a summer camp he’d been to once. “Not that’s worth mentioning.”

“Okay. There’s a basic self-defence class this semester,” Larry told him. “Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It covers how to fall, how to fall and gives you a taster of some of the more serious martial arts classes to see what might work for you. Thomas and Mary both know some karate, so they’re in that and I’ll be in Aikido.”

Opening up his tablet, Alex checked the school’s intranet and found the classes. “Okay, that seems sensible,” he agreed. “What about Tuesdays and Thursdays?”

“Tuesdays there’s basketball.” Thomas sat down on his bed and stretched, growing visible as he extended his limbs and shrinking back to normal as he relaxed. “I figure we put in as a team for that if we can find a fifth member, it’ll get us used to working together.”

“And then, on Thursdays there’s basic team tactics,” continued Larry. “Basically, it’s an intro to the various scenarios squads use and some no contact skirmishes. I figure we sign up for that, then get a slot that evening and we can go over whatever we did that day but with powers.”

“It seems like you’ve got a pretty good plan,” Alex agreed. “Okay. I’ll put down for that. Do you have any ideas for who to get for basketball?”

“I asked around and Kao Huan did it last year – you might have met him, he’s a soph.”

Alex shook his head. “Not one I’ve crossed paths with.”

“A sophomore you haven’t hung out with?” Thomas asked. “Inconceivable.”

“You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means,” Alex said in his best Inigo Montoya impersonation.

“Anyway, he’s in that Winter Sunshine team we saw earlier. The teleporter.”

“I didn’t think you liked them?” asked Alex.

“Huan’s okay. No stick up his ass like Xiang Ho.” Larry shrugged.

“Maybe you just got off on the wrong foot with him.”

“Maybe,” the New Yorker said dubiously. “Anyway, are you okay signing up for all that?”

Alex considered and then shrugged. “Sure. I’ll put my name down now.”

“Great. And we should set up a discord channel or something so we can communicate better.”

“Or at all?” the English boy asked innocently.

Larry gave him a mild glare. “Alex, word to the wise, okay?”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m sure it’s not what you mean, but you’re acting like you don’t want to hang out with the other freshmen. Either we don’t see you at all, or you’re hanging with those sophomores.”

Alex considered that and then frowned. “Okay… I suppose I can see that. The trouble is, most of what you guys have been doing so far hasn’t really been my thing. You may have noticed that I’m not exactly a party animal.”

“It’s not all parties,” Thomas told him. “Look, we’re going over to Kingsley on Wednesday after dinner. Nothing grand, just a bunch of us are going to go use one of the game rooms there – play some pool, some table tennis…”

“Sounds…” Alex paused. “Uh, actually I made plans for then already.”

The other boys rolled their eyes. “Of course,” Larry said. “You see what I mean? What is it?”

“Playing cards over here with Jimmy and his friends.” He didn’t think mentioning the girls would be a great move.

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Gambling.”

“No, it’s a boardgame sort of thing. Deckbuilding.”

“Magic the Gathering?” asked the black boy.

“…no, but kind of similar I guess?” Alex hadn’t actually played that but from what he knew it seemed like the same general sort of thing.

“Okay, but another time?”

“Sure. Actually, I was thinking of doing a little exploring in the other world – that place I teleport to,” he clarified. “Which seems safer with a group. I was going to do it one evening but it sounds like mine are going to be a little busy so maybe Saturday. I was going to invite you, but maybe I should ask some of the other freshmen too.”

“Sign me up!” Thomas agreed. “Not the sort of opportunity that comes along every day!”

Larry also nodded. “Breakfast is a bit chancy for seeing everyone, but you could let people know at lunch tomorrow and then there’s time to prepare a bit.”

“Yeah, I’d need to know who and sort it out with security. They’ll want someone along.”

“Really? It’s not like we’re little kids.”

Alex gave Larry a firm look. “Some of the wildlife isn’t very friendly.” He rubbed his ankle where he’d been hurt before. “And think of it as a chaperone. There’s no way the school’s letting a dozen or so boys and girls off campus together without sending someone to make sure we’re not… what’s the word?”

“Exchanging cooties?” suggested Thomas.

“…what’s a cootie?”

The two Americans laughed at him, so Alex decided the mature thing was to give them both the finger, which naturally just had laugh harder.

“Maybe when you’re older,” Larry snorted.

“Ah. One of those. Yes, I think you get the idea.” He smiled drily at them.

Finally the snickering died down. “Mary’s welcome, I hope?” asked Larry.

“And get, what was the word, cooties all over my private world? Yes certainly.” Alex spread his hands. “If nothing else, I should really get to know her now that we’re on the same squad.”

“I think she’s worth getting to know,” agreed Thomas. “Pretty decent company, even if she has terrible taste in teams.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask.” Alex steepled his fingers. “What’s her surname? I mean, Mary isn’t so rare a name that there couldn’t be another girl by that name.”

Larry raised an eyebrow. “Yakumo.”

Ah. Well, that did sound like a pretty Japanese name, thus explaining her ethnicity. Would that mean that she’d be a moderating effect on Larry’s evident continued annoyance with Xiang Ho? Or… Alex was pretty sure that as a rule the Japanese and Chinese weren’t all that fond of each other – they had, after all, been fighting each other only a generation or two back. He’d read somewhere that despite being fairly close to China, Japan’s Chinese expatriate community was miniscule – it was more welcoming to Africans, who had a much harder time getting there.

Of course, perhaps he was reading too much into it. Idly he brought up the font of all wisdom – Wikipedia – and looked for anything to suggest he was remembering correctly. “Okay, thanks.”

“Not a problem,” Larry agreed. “So do you have any other plans for the week?”

Alex glanced at him. “I think my schedule’s going to be pretty full. I think the next time I have any serious time off will be whatever’s left to work around Saturday’s expedition… or Sunday afternoon.” He spotted his laundry bag and groaned, “And I’m going to have to fit laundry in somewhere with that. Maybe I can do homework down in the laundry room tomorrow.”

“You know how to do laundry?” asked Larry eagerly. “I’ve never so much looked at it before.”  
“I’ve at least seen it and I have some instructions Ms. Putnam directed me too.”

“Who’s she?”

“The Home Economics teacher?”

“Ah, some old maid type?” asked Larry.

Alex took a deep breath. “I would hesitate to say that, and not just because I had no clue how to even start at laundry until she told me.”

“You two are really sheltered,” Thomas told them with a degree of amused contempt. “I’ve been doing my own laundry since grade school. It’s not rocket science.”

“Well it’s unexplored territory for me.”

“I’ll go down and show you both tomorrow,” Thomas promised. “But now I have homework, so if you don’t mind…?”

Alex glanced at the clock. “Now?” It was getting late.

“Shouldn’t take more than an hour, hour and a half,” the larger boy said.

Well, so much for lights out and going to sleep, Alex thought. “Have you done yours?” he asked Larry.

“Some of it. The rest can wait until tomorrow.” The other boy stretched a bit. “Let’s go see what’s on down in the TV rooms, give Thomas some privacy for his homework.”

“That would be appreciated.”

Alex considered begging off and going to the library, but on second thoughts decided not to. Larry was right that he was being a bit of a recluse so he might as well show willing.

“I think they might be watching the Basketball world cup,” Larry said as they left the room. “Have you ever played it?”

“Sure… um, well not formally. Just running around the courts between lessons. You’re supposed to put the ball through the hoop, right?”

Larry gave him a questioning look. “I hope you’re being sarcastic?”

“Only a little. I’m a bit vague on the specific rules.”

The groan he got suggested that he would have to study those too. So even Phys Ed was going to come with homework. Just perfect.

* * *

Thursday came and with it came the team tactics part of Phys Ed. Alex had asked about it the previous evening, while playing Dominion and the Sophomores had assured him that it was advisable for anyone who didn’t plan on doing the absolute minimum for the squad skirmish of Phys Ed.

Which wasn’t to say that there weren’t people who did exactly that, either because they were out and out pacifists, were ‘rebelling against the system’ or just couldn’t be bothered. Teenagers being teenagers, Alex had his suspicions about which category was largest. After all, he was a teenager himself.

The class took place below the sports hall. Apparently the two gyms upstairs were primarily the ‘public’ face of the Phys Ed programme. Additional spaces had been dug out beneath the school, allowing more than two skirmishes to be carried out at a time. Doing the maths, it didn’t make sense to Alex. With four to six students per squad, that meant there could be twenty or more squads among the upperclassmen and if even half of them skirmished regularly, that was only five matches per class.

“Welcome to the arenas,” Mr. Armstrong declared loudly from the middle of the room they’d arrived in. “This is where we carry out a lot of the skirmishes. For those of you who are freshmen, the gyms up above can be used for them but they’re mostly for more general activities. Faking up a situation with some padded bags and sports equipment isn’t very realistic. It’s not really what comes to mind when you think of the X-Men’s Danger room, is it?”

Alex nodded slightly. There were only twenty or so students present in the room, which reminded him more of a Star Trek holodeck. The entire room was grey except for a grid of yellow markings across the floor, although the room was about half again the size of either of the gyms above.

Mr. Armstrong thumbed a button on a remote he was holding and the floor below rose up, creating a stage about a foot high. Alex realised that the edge of the stage was lined up with the yellow grid-lines.

“As you can see, this arena can be reconfigured for multiple situations. The entire floor is made up of piston-driven square columns about ten centimetres square. By elevating them and lowering them we can create walls, platforms like this one and other obstacles. Each pillar is pretty sturdy and modular so we can repair them quickly when they are broken – which happens.”

The teacher activated the controls again and the platform dropped away, replaced by a few walls. “There is something rather more breakable in a skirmish though. Would anyone care to guess?”

Mary raised her hand.

“Go,” Armstrong ordered, pointing at her.

“Uh… there was something about simulated opponents.”

“Technically correct,” the teacher agreed. “They’re generally holograms we project from above, and those projectors are definitely more fragile than the pillars, if a little easier to replace – more expensive though. But they aren’t what I was talking about.”

“Us,” Sarah called from where she stood with her own little group.

Mr. Armstrong nodded. “Absolutely correct. You – all of you – are easily damaged and depending on the nature of the injury, potentially far harder to repair. Replacing you… well, that would be rather a problem wouldn’t it?”

There were a couple of laughs but Alex didn’t join in, nor did Mr. Armstrong. “Every last one of you is physically strong enough to maim or kill another student. It only takes an entirely normal level of human physical ability to inflict that sort of injury, and that’s before we deal with those who have superhuman strength or speed – not to mention, well on Monday you all should have seen fire, lightning and explosives being thrown around.”

“There are rules, which are intended to keep these risks to an acceptable level, but we cannot eliminate them. There are medical facilities available…” He flipped a switch and a door opened in one side of the room. “But rushing you to the hospice through that tunnel will be very little comfort if you’re short of an arm or a limb.”

“You may have at one time seen Top Gun, where the lead character decides to break exercise rules to win a wargame and escaped with a shouting at? You will not be treated so leniently. These rules are for your safety. If you break them – either in causing an injury or responding to one – then you can expect anything up to and including expulsion and criminal charges. Despite some of your classes, this is not an ordinary school and our rules are considerably more stringent than you may be used to.”

“The first rule of this is that you will honour all threats. If someone like Feuermacher starts throwing fire in your direction, he should be using only enough to mildly scorch you. Full force use of powers is for ranges and power testing, here we expect restraint. But you will treat it as if that fire was hot enough to burn you to ashes in seconds. The only exception is if you have prior consent to treat that specific power as not affecting you. Such decisions are made in advance and briefed to everyone who is involved in a skirmish before we begin. Under any other circumstance you are to avoid contact with such attacks and if you are struck by them then you will.” He paused and repeated with more emphasis: “Will, consider yourself to be out of the skirmish.”

“The second rule is the word medic. If that is called by any participant or teacher then the skirmish ends, then and there. There is no excuse for any action taken after that word is used. By calling that word you are declaring that you or someone that you can see is hurt to the point they cannot or should not continue. We will extend considerable discretion on using it. We would rather have a dozen false calls than miss someone being hurt if it could be averted.” He paused. “Be aware, however, that blatantly using it to avoid participation will not prevent us from sending you back into another skirmish, or even re-starting it. Repeated behaviour of this kind will lead to disciplinary action, but it will take place outside of the skirmishes. We will always abort when that call is made. No exceptions.”

Mr. Armstrong let that sink in for a moment and Alex glanced around at the other students. Everyone looked serious.

“Thirdly, going back to the first point: use your powers with discretion. This doesn’t just mean what you directly do to each other, although it absolutely applies to that.” He pointed at Thomas. “Mr. Russell. Size up, as far as you can in here.”

Thomas blinked and then stepped away from the others. Each step he grew by about a foot until he loomed over the other students, head almost grazing the ceiling of the room.

Mr. Armstrong pointed at one of the walls made up of pillars. “Give it a kick. Try to knock it down.”

The giant looked at the wall, then over at the teacher again. Seeing that the instruction was genuine he kicked out and one massive trainer smashed into the wall.

Pillars snapped and others deformed or were forced out of their grid under that impact.

Broken sections were hurled onwards into the space behind them and red light spilled out of the space behind them.

“Very good, Mr. Russell. Hold there for a moment.” Mr. Armstrong walked over and looked through. “Now, as you can imagine, anyone behind those pillars would have a problem. They might very well need medical attention – in the worst case they could be killed – and Mr. Russell never even directly attacked them. This obviously doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t use his powers, this wouldn’t be remotely realistic if he didn’t, but there are necessary safety measures.”

“So, when using your powers on each other, use a level of force consistent with restraining or alarming the other students involved. When using your powers on the scenery, all of you will have an earpiece and microphone connecting you to arena control. You must inform them if you are attempting anything that will break up scenery or will affect an area that you cannot see clearly. You will receive an immediate decision on whether or not you may do so.”

“If the answer is yes, you may proceed. If the answer is no, then hold your position and arena control will adjust the terrain to reflect their estimate of the consequences. They will also call out any participants they believe would be disabled by such an action and those students will be out of the skirmish.”

“We will demonstrate now. Mr. Meadows, Mr. McKenzie, Ms. Yakumo. Please go stand behind this wall.” He indicated a wall of pillars.

Alex glanced at the damage done before and winced before joining the other two.

“Mr. Russell, please declare that you are going to kick through this wall.”

Thomas sounded uneasy. “I am going to kick the wall!” he called.

“No!” a sharp voice ordered from somewhere above them all. “Meadows, McKenzie, Yakumo, you are out!” The pillars making up the wall dropped sharply down in the floor, leaving a space in the wall comparable to the damage Thomas had done.

“You three, lie down,” order Mr. Armstrong and the three of them obeyed. The floor wasn’t very slightly yielding, Alex noticed. Not much, but more like walking on grass than on metal or concrete.

“Go!” the voice called from the ceiling.

Mr. Armstrong pointed at Thomas. “And now you can proceed as if you had kicked the wall. You must follow through. Claiming you will do something you can’t do will be an automatic fail for you and for your team. From the other side of this, if one of you three thinks that you wouldn’t be taken out then you can argue about it after the skirmish is done. Not during it. The arena control’s orders for your own safety and they are just as concerned for your wellbeing as you are – given you’re a bunch of know-nothing teenagers, probably more so.”

He waved for the four of them to rejoin the other students. “Okay… you, Mr. Bleskind. Rule one is?”

“Shout medic if anyone is hurt.”

“Wrong!” Mr. Armstrong’s face was icy and contemptuous. “Mr. Maxwell, what rule does he mean?”

“Rule two, sir. The rest of the rule is to stop everything if anyone shouts medic.”

“Correct!”

Rob made a rude gesture at Steve Maxwell’s back and Mr. Armstrong jabbed one finger at him. “Detention, Mr. Bleskind. Tonight at six-fifteen. Report to the sports hall atrium.”

“The first rule, Mr. McKenzie.”

“Honour the threat, sir.”

“Correct.”

Someone muttered “teacher’s pet,” but Alex didn’t see whom.

“If any of you fence… no? Well, it’s not useful in real combat but the sport does have one rule that is applicable here. In most fencing matches when one fencer starts an attack, their opponent must counter it before attacking. Treat every attack as potentially lethal because in the real world, every attack very much is potentially lethal. Now, third rule. Ms. Granger?”

“Use powers with discretion.”

Mr. Armstrong nodded. “Exactly.” He took out his remote again. “So let’s look at what you might actually be doing in here.”

The room re-arranged itself once more. This time it lifted them all up around onto a platform as other pillars – notably excluding those that Thomas had wrecked – shifted into a maze-like configuration of blocks. “This simulates a warehouse,” the teacher told them. “Something of a stereotype, but they do actually get used by criminals and CATs who want a discreet base of operations…”

* * *

Breakfast on Saturday after the first week of classes was more subdued than the previous week had been, with an even lower turnout by students. There had been parties the night before and even the students who were awake were making extra use of the coffee machines.

Alex had got himself a cup of hot chocolate against the cold, but he’d chosen to be moderate in his partying the night before. Which wasn’t to say that he hadn’t involved himself at all. The music at Kingsley was pretty bubblegum, but that was still an improvement over Thomas’ rap.

“Are we all set?” asked Danielle. She’d stumbled in with the other girls a few moments ago but a large cup of coffee had perked her up again.

“We should be,” Alex confirmed. “Mr. Ross is meeting us outside of Ocampo in about…” he checked his phone. “Twenty minutes.”

“So that’s enough time for another round of toast.”

“Probably,” he conceded and watched her push her chair back and head back towards the serving tables. “I’d ask where she puts it all,” he said. “But I guess being a mutant helps with that.”

“For most of you,” agreed Kimberly, digging into the second half of the grapefruit she’d taken. “If I was a petty person, I would hold that against you.”

“Fortunately, you’re one letter away from that,” Alex told her and could time her understanding what he meant by the moment her cheeks went read.

Mei smacked him lightly across the back of the head. “No being unfaithful to your waifu,” she warned him playfully.

“My waifu?”

The Chinese girl waved casually in the direction of Danielle, who spotted her and waved back, not having heard the conversation.

Alex glanced in the Canadian girl’s direction. “I’m not sure how serious you are about that,” he grumbled.

“About as serious as she is about it,” said Mei, matter-of-factly. “Which is to say: not very serious, but sufficiently that the joke amuses me and bothers both of you.”

Well that was confusing and not really helpful to Alex, but he got the impression that that was going to be par for the course with girls. “I thought that waifu was a trope about Japanese… culture. But you’re Chinese.”

“A statistically significant number of Americans can’t tell the difference,” she told him, mopping up her plate. “I got used to it out of self-defence and to be fair, it’s not all bad.” She glanced around. “Don’t tell Xiang Ho that I said this, but what passes for Chinese publishing these days is pretty much trash. We can get translations of the classics, but modern Chinese writers mostly write in English or have to publish through somewhere like Japan or Korea where they at least can print in ideograms.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Danielle as she sat down with two sliced of buttered toast on her plate.

“Modern oriental literature,” Mei answered.

“Is that a course?”

“No, just a mutual interest.”

Danielle nodded. “I’ve seen Japanese books in bookshops. That sort of thing?”

Alex nodded. “I’ve read a few.” Mostly for free on fan-translation sites, since he had a limited budget, but there was no need to mention that detail.

“That makes sense,” the Canadian agreed. “They like to read about other worlds and you have one.”

“I… hadn’t thought of that. You’re not wrong though.” After all, he’d been to another world and now he was encountering attractive women, who seemed to be at least mildly fond of him.

“Ah yes, the famous isekai genre,” agreed Mei. “If you’ve read one, you’ve read them all. A bland Japanese boy is sent to another world, which triggers his mutagene and incidentally grants him exactly the power that the other world needs… as well as making him irresistible to every pretty girl in his age bracket.”

“That’s not fair,” protested Kimberly.

“You’re right,” Alex agreed. “Sometimes it’s a bland Japanese girl who winds up irresistible to every pretty boy in her age bracket.” He enjoyed them but he wasn’t blind to the fact that they could be a bit generic at times.

“Sailor Moon isn’t like that.”

Personally, Alex thought that Sailor Moon having magic powers and having a fairy tale romance with a boy four or five years older than her was very probably evidence that Sailor Moon had wandered into an alternate world but that probably wasn’t something that Kimberly would appreciate. “Well, let’s move along to a real-world, sorry, real-life isekai adventure. Do you need to fetch anything from your dorm?”

“I came prepared,” Mei said, reaching back and patting the backpack that she’d slung across the back of her chair.

Kimberly checked the time and blanched. “I have to go get my coat,” she yelped and stood up, then looked at her tray.

“I’ve got it,” Alex assured her and started stacking the dishes with his.

“Well volunteered,” Danielle cheered and picked up the last half slice of toast. “I’ll make sure we get back to you on time. Don’t leave without us.”

Alex watched the two of them head for the door facing Kingsley Dorm. “You’re welcome,” he told their backs drily and then gave Mei a stern look as she stacked her own dishes on his tray as well.

“You can handle four sets of plates as well as three, surely. Besides, you’re a man. Heavy lifting is your remit, isn’t it? You wouldn’t ask that of a girl, would you?” She blinked her eyes in a grossly overdone attempt at innocence.

He sighed and stood up, lifting the tray – admittedly without any particular effort but it was the principle of the thing. “Alright then. Time to go,” he said, directing it towards where Larry and Thomas were blearily spooning cereal into their mouths.

Larry dropped his spoon into his bowl and grabbed his coffee, draining the mug. “Sure.”

In contrast there was a clatter as Thomas dropped his spoon onto his tray and picked up the bowl. Putting it to his lips he poured the contents directly into his mouth.

“Is he going to choke?” asked Mei, in a vaguely hopeful tone.

Larry shook his head. “He’ll be fine.”

Judging by Thomas’ bulging cheeks and tightly pressed lips as he chewed on the mouthful – literally – of cereal, Alex wasn’t sure if the outcome would be choking, spewing or digestion. But Larry’s assessment was borne out as Thomas determinedly chewed away until they reached the doors and then swallowed.

Danny was waiting outside and raised one hand nervously to Alex, only to have to step aside as Thomas brushed by him.

Alex stared at his roommate’s back and shook his head slightly, then saw Danny shrinking back. “Hi Danny, have we kept you waiting?”

“Is he coming too?” asked Larry in surprise.

“I hope so,” Alex said firmly. “Unless you’re here to cancel on me.”

“N-no,” Danny said and then straightened his shoulders – he’d replaced his usual heavy sweater for an even heavier parka. “I’d like to go with you.”

“Great.”  
“I should tell Danielle that a powerful rival has appeared,” Mei said sagely.

Alex gave her a puzzled look and then shrugged. She was probably just making another joke, even if he didn’t get it.

Mr. Ross was waiting outside the dorm with Philip as the five of them arrived. “Is this everyone?” the dorm parent asked in a questioning tone. “I expected more.”

“No, there should be a few more in a moment.”

“Sorry!” Jimmy called as he and Suzy exited the dorm. “We went for a jog and Suzy was just getting cleaned up in the washroom downstairs.”

“I’m glad you remembered which to use,” Mr. Ross grumbled. “No repeats of trying to sneak her into the showers.”

“It was an emergency and I cleared the boys out,” Jimmy said, self-righteously.

“You cleared the other boys out,” the big man corrected. “You were still in there.”

“Not in the shower, worse luck.”

Suzy saw the freshmen’s puzzled looks and smiled thinly. “Someone’s prank went amiss and I was splashed with something I prefer not to discuss.”

“That sounds more like a prank going well,” Thomas muttered.

“He did not feel that way when I got my hands on him,” the girl said sweetly. “Very much not according to his plan.”

“Hello! Don’t leave, we’re here!” came a shout from above and Mary flew down over Drake, carrying Kimberly bridal style. Behind her, a woman apparently made entirely of flames was carrying Nina, the fire somehow not affecting the black girl. Once the two fliers had set down their burdens, the flames dissipated harmlessly to reveal Danielle.

Alex did a quick count. “I think that that’s everyone.”

“Twelve,” Mr. Ross agreed. “Which is as many as I’ll supervise without back-up, so if anyone else wants to come along, too bad.”

“I feel so hard done by,” called Hobbit from the door of the dorm. “Have a fun excursion, boys and girls. We’ll make sure the campus is here for you to come back to.”

“You’d better!” Mr. Ross ordered sharply and then looked back to Alex. “Alright, how do we do this?”

“I’ll take you across one at a time,” he explained. “It shouldn’t take more than a minute or two. Once you’re there, please wait until we’re all present before exploring.” Not that they could get far, but it would hopefully prevent anyone from wandering around the castle and getting into his private room.

“Is there any risk in people being there without you?” asked Jimmy carefully.

“No – or at least not that we’ve noticed so far,” Alex told him. “I’ve left people there before as I ferry other people across.”

“Just checking we wouldn’t vanish while you come back here.”

He grinned at the older boy’s concern. “Well, I’m not ruling it out. But if you do then it’ll be your doing, not mine.”

“Take me across first,” Mr. Ross directed.

“Sure.” Alex reached out his hand. “Hold on, please.”

The large man gripped his wrist lightly and Alex stepped in a manner that was growing familiar. They arrived outside the castle door and Mr. Ross didn’t let go for a moment, looking back and forth before he finally released Alex. “I’d heard about it,” he said when he did. “But I admit I haven’t seen a power quite like this one before.”

Alex nodded. “I get that impression from a lot of people, sir.”

Mr. Ross nodded. “Well, I’ll be alright here for a moment. Start bringing your friends across.”

Stepping backwards, Alex was once again outside Ocampo. “Alright, who’s next?”

The others hesitated for a moment and then Danny stepped forwards. “I’ll go.”

“No, me first!” called Danielle.

Alex shook his head. “Okay, I can probably bring you both. Taking two people at once works, I just don’t make a habit of it.”

The two both accepted his hands. “Three, two, one,” Danielle chanted and on one, Alex pulled them after him.

Danny stumbled on one of the uneven flagstones as they arrived and Alex kept him from falling with a firm pull on the other boy’s hand. “Are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah. Sorry.” Danny flushed and released Alex’s hand.

“I guess I should be more careful with that first step.”

“This is amazing!” Danielle exclaimed, turning on the spot to take it all in. “Is this the castle?” she pointed.

“It is, yes.” Alex couldn’t help but smile at her enthusiasm.

“Can we go inside?”

“…let’s get everyone across first,” he suggested.

Larry and Thomas tried to push forwards next, but Philip quietly insisted that he was next, since his little sister had already gone across. Alex accepted this argument and took the junior across with Thomas before returning to collect Larry and Mary. With so many transits in a few seconds, he felt the need for a moment to catch his breath and stopped to drink a little water as they also got themselves orientated. Danny had a camera out, he noticed.

“So, this is your Cair Paravel?” asked Thomas, pointing at the castle.

“Something like that. I mean, it is a castle in another world.”

“Fair. Pity you had a huge boar instead of a lion.”

“The boar was frightening enough. If Aslan had turned up I’d probably have done myself an injury.”

Stepping back, he grinned at the others. “Sorry, I needed a moment.”

“We didn’t think that you’d forgotten us,” Jimmy told him.

“I’ll go back to one at a time,” Alex said apologetically. “It seems a bit easier.”

“Okay, but I’m first,” Jimmy said.

Mei laughed. “Haven’t you heard that ladies go first?”

“I’m feeling outnumbered, the only guy surrounded by all you fair maidens.”

Suzy nudged him below the ribs. “Take him across, Alex. Don’t worry about bringing him back.” But the smile she directed at Jimmy was warm.

Alex bowed to her. “Your wish, milady Kee. Come here, you.” He caught Jimmy’s shoulder and took one step, bringing Jimmy across backwards.

“Yow!” the other boy pinwheeled his arms for a moment, apparently off-balance. “Warn a guy!”

“I did,” Alex said, stepping clear. “So did Suzy.”

“Well can you blame me for being distracted when Suzy’s smilin’ at me like that?”

Alex considered the smile and then his own lips curled a little ruefully. “I guess not.”

“I may throw up,” Thomas said loudly.

“Well you shouldn’t have bolted all that cereal then,” Alex told him and stepped off again.

Suzy was next, and then in rapid succession Mei and Kimberly.

“So, I’m last?” asked Nina, hands on her hips.

“Someone has to be,” Alex said in what he hoped was a reasonable tone.

Nine sniffed and then extended her hand. “Come on, white boy. Let’s mosey.”

“Mosey?” he asked and took her hand. A moment later they had joined the others.

The others were still standing around the castle entrance still, although they had dispersed a little with Mr. Ross standing off to one side and examining the stonework of the bridge, while Danielle, Mary and Larry had taken off and were looking through windows of the castle.

“This is pretty impressive,” Thomas greeted Alex’s return. He pointed at the castle. “You have any idea who used to live here?”

“Not a clue,” Alex admitted. He orientated himself and then pointed westwards. “There’s what looks like it used to be a town on the western end of this island, but I haven’t had a close look at it.”

“Did they leave anything behind?” asked Kimberly.

Alex shrugged. “No. So I guess they probably had time to pack whatever they were taking with them.”

“Are we going to have a look at the town?”

Alex shrugged. “We can. We have a couple of options.” He raised his voice. “Okay, everyone. If anyone wants to look inside the castle, I’ll unlock it now. After that we can either head west along the island and take a look at the town or we can go across to the mainland.”

“What’s on the mainland?” Danielle called, in her fiery form and staying up above the group.

He grinned. “I have no idea! I’ve taken a little walk through the forest there, but since I found this castle this is pretty much where I’ve hung out here.” Taking the key from his pocket, he removed the padlock that held the castle door closed.

Danielle swooped down and followed Alex inside, flames lighting the hall inside and then the larger room that doors led off. She looked at the dim light that streamed through from a narrow window ahead of them. “Is that the other side of the castle? I thought it was larger?”

Alex shook his head. “It’s a light well. An open shaft leading down from the roof. There are openings on all three floors, letting some light into the centre of the castle. It’s particularly useful down here, there aren’t many windows here on the ground floor.”

“What would the rooms here be used for?” asked Kimberly.

“If it’s anything like historical castles, probably storage.” Thomas hunched his shoulders as if he felt that the heavy stones were constraining him. Which they were, to an extent, since if he grew too far… well, Alex would rather he didn’t do that. The castle might give before Thomas did, but it might not. Either would be bad.

“Basically.” Alex pointed at one door. “My dad thinks that this room was for guards to keep an eye on people trying to enter the keep, but most of these rooms were probably food and wine cellars. It’s not particularly warm down here.”

“And upstairs?” Larry put one foot on the first broad step and looked to Alex for permission.

“I’ll show you.” Alex went back to the door. “I’m going to go upstairs, if anyone doesn’t come inside…”

“I’m coming,” Mei said promptly.

Jimmy and Suzy exchanged looks. “I’ll stay out here,” he said. “Is it okay if we walk around the outside?”

“Sure.”  
“I’ll stay here as well,” Mr. Ross declared, a sidelong glance at the couple suggesting his reason. “If you’re going to be staying inside more than fifteen minutes or so, let me know.”

“Thanks.”  
The dorm parent made a dismissive wave of his hand.

Alex held the door for Mei and pointed up the stairs where Larry and Mary were already climbing. “Are you coming, Danny?”

Danny, who was squinting up the light well, turned and nodded. “Coming.”

The stairs doubled back on the entrance, taking them up into a small chamber that looked down on the castle’s approaches and the bridge through arrow slits. There was another sturdy door here, leading back into the main castle. Fortunately, when Alex and his father had explored, this door hasn’t been left closed because it was very much of a kind with that below, thick and heavy to resist efforts to force it open. Alex pushed it open and propped it closed, not incidentally blocking a narrow door behind it – the door leading to a spiral staircase up to the room he’d taken as his own.

“And here we have the Great Hall,” he gestured ahead and to the right as the entered. It was the largest chamber in the castle, two storeys tall and lit by windows high up on the outer wall and into the light well on the inside. “I generally use this as my main place for bringing people through, but I thought you should get the outside view too.”

“This is pretty neat!” Mary exclaimed and flew up to look out of the windows. “Hey, I thought so, this is the window we were looking in, Larry!”

“It should be,” the boy agreed.

Nina looked around. “I guess this is where the lord would lord over everyone.”

“Well, probably from more the other end of the room.” Alex pointed to the further end of the hall. “There would probably have been a wooden dais up there with a head table for him to eat off, or to hold all the paperwork when he was holding court. That’s how it worked in medieval England, anyway.”

“Looking down on everyone.”

“That’s right.” He looked around. “There’s room here for a party, I suppose, but it’s a bit big for just me.”  
Danielle poked her head through one of the doors leading off the hall. “Where do these doors lead?”

“That one’s almost certainly the kitchen.” Alex waved his hand at it. “There are a lot of fireplaces, so likely they used it to prepare food to be eaten here.”

“For the lords and knights?”

“For everyone. There wouldn’t be a lot of privacy.” He gestured to one side of the door that that Danielle was standing at. “I’m not sure about that one. Might be more storage.” Then he indicated the door on the other side of the girl. “That goes through to what was almost certainly the great chamber, somewhere for the lord to do more private business.”

“What about this door down here?” Thomas asked, pointing at one leading off from where Alex thought there would have been a dais – partly because the door was higher off the floor than those at the entrance end.

“That’s an interesting one.” He walked over and led the others through into the narrow, high room. “If this was a European castle, I’d have said it was a chapel.” The windows were up above this level, but there were several large ones, unfortunately large enough that they’d taken damage where narrower windows had survived intact. As a result, the room had been a bit of a mess when Alex first found it. He’d had to dig the floor out, which had been a stinking job. “Of course, I’ve no idea if whoever built this had a religion in the first place, but I think those windows likely had stained glass.”

“Are you going to fix them?” asked Danny.

“Probably. I’m not sure how, but it’s one major issue with weatherproofing the place.”

Larry craned his neck upwards. “Is there another floor?”

“Yes, although not entirely. About half the rooms here are double height.” Alex pointed to a door at the back of the chapel. “That leads up – you see that little window at the back, looking down? It’s lighting the entrance to the solar.”

“Solar? Some sort of sun room?”

“No, the personal quarters for the lord and his family, up above the great chamber.” He raised one hand. “Sorry, if you can’t fly, you’d probably better not go up there. The floor’s wood and I’m not sure how safe it is.” And hopefully they wouldn’t think to wonder if any of the upstairs rooms didn’t have wooden floors – like Alex’s room above the vaulted entrance section of the keep.

“That’s a shame.”

“Maybe another time.” He gestured through a door. “We can go through to the great chamber here.”

He let the other students wander for a few minutes, following Danielle and Mei through to the kitchen. “Do these fireplaces work?” asked the Chinese girl.

“I assume so. They might need cleaning, which is a bit of a specialised job these days. I haven’t tried setting a fire here, I just cleaned them out over the summer. I have to say, it’s probably very cold in here in winter. I may have to figure out some sort of heating safer than an open fire if I spend any significant time here.”

“And you can’t exactly plug in an electric heater,” she agreed. “I guess you’d want to block the chimneys then.”

“I imagine so. I’d have to raise a lot of cash if I want to start living here. It’s something to think about.”  
“You might want to take workshop,” Mei suggested. “There are advanced classes for those of us with more technological bents, but you could use restoring this place as a project.”

“It’s a thought,” he agreed.

When ten minutes were up, he went back to the great hall. “Okay, everyone, time to go outside. Mr. Ross will be fretting if we take longer.”

“Alex!” called Kimberly. “Do you have a toilet here?”

“No. Well, there are. But you probably don’t want to try them. Medieval plumbing…” He offered her his hand. “I’ll drop you off back outside Kingsley, if you need to go.”

“Thanks.” She accepted his hand and followed him back to AVM’s campus.

“I’ll come back in a moment,” he said. “I should offer the others a chance to go.”

That turned into ten minutes of back and forth, mostly of the girls although Danny Paine also thought it best to use the facilities of the school rather than stepping behind some bushes, as Mr. Ross had.

“Okay.” Alex sat on the low, broad wall that marked the edge of the bridge. “So, I said earlier than we had two options: firstly, we can head west and see if we can get through to what looks like an abandoned town. Or if you’d rather, we can cross the bridge and see what we can find on the mainland. We may as well be democratic. Show of hands for going to see the town?”

Kimberly and Nina stuck up their hands, followed by Danny, Suzy and… after a moment Jimmy followed his girlfriend’s lead.

Mei’s hand went up last. “There’s more chance of finding out whoever used to live here,” she pointed out.

“Six,” counted Alex. “And for going across the bridge?”

Larry, Thomas and Mary put their hands up, joined by Philip and Danielle Beaudoin. Of course, those who could fly, or in the case of Thomas just step over any obstacles. They were outnumbered though. Alex looked at Mr. Ross. “Are you voting?”

“No, it’s up to you.”

“Well, a narrow majority for the town this time. Sorry, guys.” His own squad united against the majority, great. “I did say we’d be democratic. We can explore the mainland another day.”

Larry nodded. “That’s fair. Okay, how do we get to the town?”

Alex shrugged. “The only time I saw it, Mr. Colton was flying me around. I think this road -” He pointed at the overgrown paving leading from the bridge into the forest. “- leads there, but we’ll have to find out. It’s why this is an exploration.”

“Okay.” Larry cupped his chin for a moment. “How about those of us that can fly scout a route out for the rest of you? Thomas can probably remove most obstacles.”

“That sounds like a decent plan,” agreed Alex. “We should keep any eye out for animals though. I haven’t seen anything much here lately, but they may just avoid the castle.”

The Beaudoins took off first. “We’ll watch the flanks for any animals,” Philip called down. “Larry, you and Mary go ahead and see where the road goes.”

“Make sure to watch the sky as well,” Mr. Ross called up to them.

“We will!”

“What do you think might come up in the sky?” asked Thomas.

The teacher shrugged. “I have no idea. That’s why I want to be on guard.”


	13. Field Trip Part 2 (Bear With Us)

As the ground-bound members of the group began to follow the overgrown road, Thomas and Mr. Ross took the lead. Trees had overgrown the road in places, roots forcing the stone aside but sometimes those stone had weakened the roots and either completely or partially toppled the tree in return. The two physical powerhouses had little difficulty breaking past them, Jimmy occasionally stepping forwards when they faced particularly impressive obstacles. The boy’s skin took on the colour of iron as he added his strength to theirs.

“I never get tired of watching that,” Mei noted from behind them. “I don’t have any regrets about my power, but something a little more physical wouldn’t be amiss.”

Danny looked at her for a moment. “Uh, what is your power? If you don’t mind me asking?”

“Mind you asking?” Mei gave the boy a grin. “It’s probably the most asked question in the school. I’m something of an inventor, I make gadgets. According to the science team, they shouldn’t work, but QED: they do, so science pretty clearly doesn’t have the answers. Not yet, anyway.”

“Oh.” Danny brightened up. “I sort of do the same.”

“Neat. What sort of things do you make? Do you have a focus or are you a generalist like I am?”

“Holograms!” the freshman said quickly. “And, ah, forcefields. I can make and modify projectors for them.”

“Interesting.” Mei’s brows furrowed. “Can you combine them?”

Danny nodded.

“So, if you have a projector, could you set something up that uses holograms and forcefields to generate tools and equipment?”

“If it was the right projector,” the boy agreed. “I made a…” he paused and flushed. “A blaster, I guess. I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

“That sounds like the sort of thing that could be pretty useful in squad skirmishes,” Mei disagreed. “I mean, there’s a time and a place for everything. For people like us, whose power is in technology, we can tailor our solutions to the problem.”

“I’d agree,” Alex said from Danny’s other side, causing the boy to jump. “I mean, I can go back and forth to here. That’s it, so if I have a problem where that isn’t useful then I’m just another guy. Might as well not be a mutant, really. But if you have the time, you can make sure you have the tools you need to deal with whatever situation you face.”

Mei nodded. “Exactly. And if you can project a blaster, couldn’t you use the same projector to make a cutting tool? Or a welding laser. It sounds like your power makes you very flexible.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Danny admitted in a thoughtful tone. “I should probably talk to the workshop teachers about that.”

“Yep.” Mei thought a moment. “Dr. Silverback might be the best person to start with. He’s spent a lot of time having to adjust tools and equipment because his hands aren’t the same shape as a human’s. So, he’d have a perspective on what sort of things you might find it useful to have on hand.”

“Hey!” Mary called to them from above. “Something’s collapsed under the road ahead. You’ll need to go around.”

Mr. Ross shook his head. “Wait until we take a look,” he called up to her, then paused and looked at Alex. “Since we’re exploring, we should assess obstacles rather than just avoiding them.”

“That makes sense to me,” Alex agreed.

When they reached the spot it was obvious why Mary had thought it was better to go around. A section of the ground had slid down hill at some point and there was a gap of at least two metres where the flagstones of the road were scattered down the slope, while the ditch left in their wake had a stream cutting through the gap.

“I wouldn’t advise trying to climb that,” Mr Ross noted. “It’s probably unstable.”

“How could this happen?” asked Kimberly.

Mei dropped to one knee and eyed the road. “This isn’t like a modern road, or even a roman road. The roadbed – the stonework below the surface – isn’t all that deep. My best guess is that there was a drain to let the stream go under the road but it blocked and water found other routes through the ground, undermining it.”

“Good guess. And add in some frost expanding the holes in winter and then washing away in the spring,” agreed Mr. Ross. “Road maintenance is important these days – just maintaining the roads around the school is a bother. For something less sturdy like this one… It might have lasted only a few years.”

“It still leaves us with a problem,” observed Jimmy. “Do we go uphill and find a better place to cross?”

Danny glanced back and then at the gap. “Uh.”

“I suppose we should,” Mr. Ross agreed. “The fliers could take us across a few at a time but we do need to get back and I’d rather not rely on any specific people being available when we need to.”

“Do you have an idea, Danny?” Alex asked.

“We could make a bridge,” he suggested.

“That’s a bit more complicated than it seems,” the dorm parent said. “But how would you go about it?”

The boy looked backwards. “There are trees you pushed aside. A-and Kimberly can glue them together. It’s not a normal bridge, but it could be enough to cross.”

“It wouldn’t last forever,” Mei observed, “But that’s not what we’re aiming for. Half a dozen tree trunks would be enough for braces and we could split one or two length-ways to provide a surface.”

Mr. Ross stepped back and put his hands on his hips and examined the situation. “Ms. Miyako, do you think you can manage that?”

“Sure,” she agreed, holding up her hands. “Sticking things together is easy.”

“Alright, let’s give it a try then. Mr. Russell, go back and fetch the trees we uprooted. Mr. Corrigan, you and Ms. Chang are to figure out how to shape them. Mr. McKenzie, Mr. Paine, look it over and figure out how to put props in to support a bridge.”

“And do you have something I should do?” asked Suzy, practically hopping from one foot to another.

Mr. Ross looked upstream. “Go up hill and downhill for us, see if there might be a better point to bridge or walk around. I’d rather have options. But don’t go out of sight of the fliers.” He cupped his hands and shouted. “Beaudoins! Keep an eye on Ms. Kee to make sure she doesn’t fall or get stuck somewhere.”

Suzy saluted sloppily and disappeared downhill in a blur.

Alex stared after her and then shrugged. He went to the edge of the ditch. “I don’t know much about bridge-building,” he admitted. “How clever do you think we should try to be?”

“Not very,” Danny said. “One brace here, just as far off the edge of the ditch as we can reach, then another on the other side. We want to leave plenty of clearance between them, or the water will destabilise it right from the beginning.”

Alex rubbed his face. “Someone’s going to have to build the other end, aren’t they?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Danny admitted in a small voice.

“It’s fine,” Mr. Ross said in a low voice. “We can use longer branches and trees and treat the other side of the road as a brace. It isn’t as reliable as having two braces, but it should serve.”

Thomas strode back along the road, carrying a stripped tree trunk. “I could probably just step across, you know.”

“Please don’t try.” The older man shook his head. “You don’t just increase your height, your mass also goes up and we don’t know how stable the ground is below the road. If several tons of student goes tumbling down that slope we could have a medical emergency.”

“Yes sir,” the boy conceded and lowered the tree to the road. “There are a couple more trees this size, but after that it’s smaller ones or knocking another down.”

“Danny?”

“Umm…”

The boy eyed the gap. “Three trees this size should do, I think. Sink two of them into the bank of the stream as the brace and then we can split the other and glue it to smaller trees to create a level surface for the bridge… well, level enough.”

“I’m glad I have you lot along,” Alex said. “I’m not very much use in this situation.”

“No.” Danny shook his head quietly. “Without you none of us would be here, so we couldn’t build this bridge at all.”

That was a nice thought, Alex admitted. Although if it wasn’t for him there wouldn’t be any need to build the bridge so that pretty much cancelled out.

Jimmy was able to finish stripping down the trunks with his bare hands and Mei examined the three tree trunks before picking one as most suitable to split.

“I don’t see anywhere narrower than this before the slope starts getting steep uphill,” Suzy reported, breathlessly. Alex almost jumped out of his skin, he hadn’t heard her return. “I’ll look downhill now.”

“I think this is where to put it.” Danny pointed down at a section of the streambank near the upstream side of the road. “Right around…”

“Put something there as a marker,” Mr Ross directed. “Mr. Russell, don’t go too near the edge but if you can hold this tree vertically then we can drive it down vertically as the first pillar of the brace.”

“Thinking of hammering it in?” asked Thomas in an amused voice. “And me without my tool belt.”

“I don’t think hammers come large enough. At least not in a hardware store,” Alex murmured.

“My clothes grow. Tools ought to as well, maybe if I had a sledgehammer...” His roommate shrugged. “Maybe you could go back and borrow one.”

“Convenient as that would be,” advised Mr. Ross, “I don’t think it’ll be necessary. “I just want you to steady the top. I’ll do the same at the bottom and then Ms. Yakumo will be pushing it downwards.”

“Cool.”

It really was as simple as that. The three mutants drove one of the tree trunks into the soft, muddy ground until it started to look as if it would splinter rather than go deeper. And then the second, perhaps a foot further up the stream, their largest roots – which Mei had told Jimmy to leave alone – almost interlocking.

“Now if we put some branches to hold them together,” Danny told the group, “That gives us a platform to support our bridge at this end.”

“I’m up then.” Kimberly stepped gingerly out onto the slope. “I think I can… Whoa.” Mr. Ross had simply lifted the freshman girl off her feet and by stretching was able to swing her over onto the roots. “Pass her branches one at a time, Mr. Russell.”

“Sure.” He extended the first.

“If you knock me into the mud, Thomas Russell, I demand that you do my laundry!”

“I don’t think they’ll let me into the laundry at Kingsley,” he said as she took the branch and a translucent white fluid spilled from her hands and clung to the wood. She pressed it against the roots and the fluid bonded, securing it. Thomas extended another branch for her. “And would you want your clothes washed in Ocampo?”

“The obvious solution to this dilemma is not to fall,” Larry told Kimberly as he hovered in the air above them.

She swayed and clung to the trees before steadying. “Thanks. I would never have thought of that.”

Larry descended. “I’ll try to catch you if it seems likely.”

Fortunately, the tree trunks steadied as more branches were glued into place and they sank measurably into place. Under Danny’s instructions, Kimberly secured a dozen branches in a rough ramp linking them to the road and she walked back down it to join them, arms wide to maintain her balance. “So far, so good, right?”

“And well begun is only half-done,” Mei told her. “I hope you have more of that glue.”

“Just tell me where you want me to… er, apply it?”

“Expel it,” suggested Nina.

“Ejaculate it,” Thomas proposed at almost the same moment.

Both girls glared up at the towering boy. “You’re a dead man, Thomas,” Kimberly hissed. “The vengeance of heaven is slow but sure.”  
  


“Oh no! Don’t spray me with your white sticky fluid,” he said in mock fear. “I’m not into bukkake!”

Alex looked at Kimberly’s red face and shook his head. “I don’t want to know what that is, do I?”

“Nope,” Mei said firmly. “Danielle likes you innocent and naïve.”

“…I’m not going to argue with what is clearly working,” Alex decided, cutting short what looked to be another jibe from Thomas. “Just for the record, ladies, I have to share a room with this idiot. Please make sure the vengeance of heaven is also accurate. I don’t want to be caught in the splatter…”

If anything, Kimberly went even redder.

“What are you doing down there?” asked Danielle, coming in to land. “I thought you were building a bridge.”

“We are.” Mei gestured to the tree trunk where she’d used some tools from her pockets to drive a few holes into it. “Jimmy, try to use these as handgrips.”

The metal-skinned boy dug his fingers into them. “Okay, what now?”

“Wiggle your fingers about a bit. We want them to be wider on the inside than at the entrances.”

“I’m not sure…” he muttered.

“Just pretend…” Mei leant over and whispered the rest into his ear and the tips of Jimmy’s metallic ears seemed to go orange… blushing, Alex realised.

“Mei!”

“What, you don’t think Suzy shares girl-talk with the rest of us?” She looked up. “Danielle, I love you dearly, but we need your brother for the next bit.”

“Yeah, I suppose setting it on fire wouldn’t be ideal.” The girl reached over and ruffled Alex’s hair. “Just hold on, we’ll have this expedition back on track in a moment.

Even Mr. Ross seemed to find that amusing, for reasons that escaped Alex.

A few moments later, Philip returned and landed. “So, Mei. Danielle tells me you’ve finally admitted that you want me.”

“What I want is a really good lateral saw, but in lieu of that you’re a useful tool.”

“Ouch,” the Canadian boy said, clutching his heart.

“It’s a promotion from just being a tool,” Jimmy said unsympathetically, taking his fingers out of the wood. He rubbed the fingers against each other. “That was uncomfortable.”

“Big baby,” Mei told him. “Philip, we need a lot of air pressure in these holes. How many do you think you can put a miniature whirlwind into?”

“Uh… should be all of them,” he said after a moment. “Are you sure I won’t just make it explode?”

“That’s basically what I want.” The girl tapped her finger on the end of the tree trunk. “I figure it should split roughly equally along its length. Which is the idea.”

“In that case, everyone else should back up,” ordered Mr. Ross. “I assume you can guard yourself against splinters, Mr. Beaudoin.”

Philip shrugged. “I’d better at this point,” he declared. “I’d hate to let Mei down with my performance.”

“I would never let you hear the end of it,” the girl agreed, stepping back with the rest of them.

Alex watched with fascination as the Canadian brought the wind howling around him, dust and flecks of dirt leaving it visible, and then directed it into eight needle-tight twisters like miniature cyclones.

For a moment nothing seemed to happen and then the log creaked alarmingly. “It’s cracking,” Phillip reported. “Should I push into them?”

“Yes!” Mei called, hiding behind Jimmy.

“Hokay!”

And with a resounding crack the tree trunk came apart along its length. Splinters sprayed out and Alex half-turned, throwing up his arms. A sharp breeze swept away the fragments before they could reach anyone though and Philip turned, a smug expression painted onto his face. “One hurricane, to the lady’s specification.”

“I’ll take it,” agreed Mei.

“What was that?” demanded Suzy, blurring up the hill towards them, weaving through the trees.

Nina pointed at the two halves of the tree. “Philip was cutting the log for us.”

The older girl frowned. “How did he do that?”

“Very well, thank you,” the Canadian told her.

“Yes, yes, your wheezing is appreciated,” Mei told him. “Now, Kimberly, once Thomas puts the two halves next to each other.”

“Say please,” the giant rumbled.

“Once Thomas please pretty please puts these halves side-by-side, I’ll fill the space between them with smaller branches. Can you then glue all that together without gluing it to the ground?”

The freshman looked hesitant. “I’m not sure. I can’t really control it once I’ve created it.”

“Don’t do this on the road then,” Alex suggested. “If you do the work on dirt then the worst that happens is that there’s dirt on the other side when it’s lifted into position.”

Mr. Ross nodded approvingly. “Very sensible.”

“Why does he get approval like that when I did all that and you didn’t say anything,” Philip whined, although he winked at Alex.

The muscular man humphed. “I have lower expectations for freshmen.”

“Does that mean you’d pat them on the head for remembering to tie their shoelaces?”

“No, but if you’d learned faster how to keep your room clean then you might have received at least a small accolade.”

“Ouch!” Philip clutched his chest.

Danielle soared down and landed near them. “Are you going into cardiac arrest?” she asked her brother.

“No, just nursing a bruised ego.”

“Nothing new then,” she concluded briskly. “Are you almost done. I think Larry and Mary are getting cranky about the delay.”

“We’re on the last step now,” Mr. Ross told her. “Why don’t you and Philip get them to wait on the other side in case we need someone to secure the other end?”

The completion of the bridge was almost anticlimactic. Thomas held the main section up while Mr. Ross and Jimmy (no longer in metal form) braced it against the top of the pillars and then let it fall forwards and across the bridge. It bounced twice, the far end digging into the dirt just short of the flagstones and Larry eyed it sceptically.

“Should we do anything more to hold it here?” he asked.

“Just put your weight on the far end and see if it slips,” Mr. Ross ordered.

Larry obeyed, visibly holding himself ready to fly up off it if his footing gave way. The end dug deeper into the ground but only a little as he stamped. “I think it’s gonna hold,” he decided.

“Okay, then.” Mr. Ross and stepped back to gesture to Alex. “Let’s stick to only one at a time, you go first Alex.”

The lack of a guard-rail was a little disconcerting, but the bridge was only a couple of metres long and over a foot wide so with four quick steps Alex was across. Larry greeted him with a flamboyant bow. “Welcome to western Alexonia,” he declared.

“’Alexonia’?”

“Well who else would it be named for, but the intrepid explorer. You could have your own flag.”

“I’m not planning to colonise the place,” Alex said with a grin and stepped aside so that Suzy could cross.

*

The town, when they reached it, had a melancholy air to it. The castle they’d arrived at was intact enough that one could imagine that the owners had left only a short while before, but it wasn’t possible to hold this illusion as the students walked along the main street that cut through the town, paralleling the beach.

Doors and windows were gapingly empty, and the roofs were equally open with only a few still showing the beams that had once supported roofing materials of some kind.

“If it wasn’t for the chimneys, some of the more overgrown houses could be lost among the trees,” Jimmy said in a low voice. It seemed… wrong, somehow, to speak out loud.

Mr. Ross nodded solemnly. “Some people think that entropy means death. But without the order we impose on nature, it doesn’t die away. It’s arrogant to think that it does. Instead life goes on… just without us.”

Alex winced. That was a painful thought. It was true, but that didn’t make it easier to live with.

“On a slightly less depressing note,” Suzy said, with a reproving look at the dorm parent, “There’s some sort of square up ahead.”

After a look back and then forwards, Alex hazard a guess that: “I think we must be getting towards the far end of the island.”

“Not quite,” Larry corrected from above. “Suzy’s right about the square – the road goes through it but goes northwards from it rather than on, probably it would run into the water if it did.”

“The buildings are getting larger.” Mei pointed at the houses on the right. “Not so much on the left, facing the water, but on the inland side of the road, they’re wider and I think they extend further back.”

Nina snorted. “I guess the important people have to have their own bit of the town.”

“Important is relative. They’re still basically shops and workshops,” argued Larry. “But the more prosperous houses here do suggest some kind of hierarchy.”

“How did they get water?” Alex wondered. “Food is probably fishing and garden plots behind the houses on our right, but the water down there -” He waved to his left. “Is salt water.”

“The stream we crossed suggests there may be some freshwater source higher up the island.” Mr Ross shaded his eyes. “It’s too big to just be rainwater with somewhere this size. And…” He lengthened his stride as they entered the square. While the buildings around it were overgrown, the square only had grass where it had worked its way up around the flagstones and there was an obvious structure in one corner. “A well. There’s no point digging one of those if there’s no fresh water to be had.”

“Or they exhausted it and that’s why no one is still here.”

Larry shook his head. “Right here, maybe not, but there are bound to be streams and the like out on the mainland, so someone would still be there if that was all that was going on.”

“I guess you’re right.” But in that case why did they leave? And where did they go?

Thomas studied the well and then tried to lift the lid. “Humph. That’s not handy to open at all. Jimmy, can I have a hand?”

The older boy studied it and then shook his head. “What you need is a delicate touch here, Thomas.”  
“No, it’s stuck.”

Jimmy walked around the well and shook his head. “I disagree.” He reached out and pulled a bolt. “Now then.” The lid lifted easily.

“…I thought that that was a hinge.”

“Of course, you did.”

“At least it’s open.” Mei leant over, a penlight in her hand. “Well, there’s water down there. But I don’t see a bucket or any way to put one down.”

“Aren’t they supposed to have some kind of windy thing at the top?”

“A winch?”

“Yes!” Nina agreed.

“Well, they may have been taken away. They’ve stripped everything out of the houses we looked at when we got to the edge of the town.”

Kimberly looked around. “Do you think that they did the same here? The houses are bigger – look, that one has three floors.”

“You can take a look if you want,” Alex pointed out. “Although I wouldn’t suggest going upstairs in any.”  
“Assuming they didn’t take the stairs in the first place.” She looked at the house. “Mary, do you want a look too?”

“Why not?” the slightly taller Japanese-American girl agreed. “I don’t need stairs.”

“Yes, that might come in handy.” There was a crash from inside the house a moment after the girls vanished inside. “They… uh, the stairs are gone here.”

“Well they are now.”

Larry and Alex exchanged looks and started laughing uncontrollably.

“Are you alright in there?”

“Yes, Mr. Ross. The only injury is to the stairs.”

Danielle flew back in. “The castle up there isn’t in as good shape as yours, Alex.” She blinked. “And what are you laughing at?”

He wiped his eyes. “Kimberly and Mary are doing some exploring.”

“Idiots,” Nina murmured. She looked in the direction that Danielle had flown back from. “I can’t see any castle.”

The Canadian girl pointed. “You can just barely… well, maybe not from ground level. Up past those two large houses, you see the firs behind them?”

“Yes.”

“Just beyond that. It’s on lower ground.”

The girls readily agreed to set aside house exploration for the castle and they followed the road around the houses and towards the crumbling towers of the castle. They were relatively low towers, which helped to explain why they hadn’t been visible earlier – looming over the strait from where it sat on the coast but not so much the village.

The structure was compact with only short sections of wall dividing the circular towers and the gatehouse, themselves forming a C-shape, with the end closed off by a rectangular hall. The space in the middle – the bailey, technically – couldn’t be much larger than the hall – if at all.

“I wonder why this one isn’t holding up as well as the other one?”

Alex nodded to Kimberly. “It might be something about the roofs of the towers – if they’re more susceptible to the weather then their collapse could have opened up the inside to wind and rain. But I’m just guessing.”

He hoped the same didn’t suddenly happen to the other castle. He’d never be able to afford to repair it. Castle repairs cost a fortune for places like English Heritage – and they could usually make the castles they were working on much more accessible to workmen. It wasn’t as if people could bring a van over here. And probably not scaffolding…

The road snaked down the shore and reached the gates, which looked down over the strait. It would be a bit of a climb for someone to get up to the gate from the sea, so it probably wouldn’t be a huge vulnerability. And it’d be difficult to get a battering ram among.

“I hope the door is easier to get open than the one at the other castle.”

“Was it locked?”

“No, but the bar was left on the floor – or fell there in just the way to block the door from opening more than a couple of inches. It was fiddly to get open.”

“In the worst case, we can just break it down,” Mary pointed out.

Alex winced. “I’d rather not. And this has an open interior – even where it shouldn’t. So you could just fly over and remove whatever the obstruction is.”

“Oh, good point.” She blushed a little.

Mr. Ross chuckled. “Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that because you have superhuman strength that it’s the only tool that you have.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about the door.”

Alex followed Jimmy’s finger as they came into view of the entrance. The doorway wasn’t occupied by a door and daylight could be seen through it. “I guess not.”

The door was there, they learned, although it was flat on the floor and half buried in dirt and leaves.

“I guess this is that sort of neighbourhood,” Larry quipped.

“Nah, if it was the fishing boats would be here, just up on bricks.”

One day, Alex thought, he’d be able to fully understand everything people said in a conversation, subtext and references, the whole lot. Maybe it happened when you grew up.

They filed through and found that the entrance led directly under the gatehouse and into the central yard. A tree had grown here at some point, but it had broken off around the height of Alex’s shoulders and what had happened to the rest wasn’t clear. Perhaps it had been blown away, or somehow broken down until it made up part of the crud covering the floor.

Mr. Ross nodded appreciatively. “I hate to sound like an interior decorator, but that tree would really complete this courtyard if it was alive.”

“It’s certainly the centre of the castle,” Alex noted. The great hall had a long row of stone window frames looking out on the yard, which would probably light it nicely. He couldn’t see through them due to the elevation – there was a door into some space below them that had fallen inwards just like the outer door.

“There’s a funny smell. Sorry Alex, but it’s true.”

He sniffed and then nodded slightly to Larry, conceding the point. “I don’t know what it is. But it’s not all that strong.”

Mr Ross frowned. “It reminds me of something, I can’t put my finger on it…” He went up the stone steps and looked into the great hall. “The floor’s half gone,” he reported. “Don’t risk it unless you can fly.”

There was a scraping sound from under the hall and all eyes went to the door leading down there.

“What was - ?”

And then something emerged, something that roused atavistic fear in Alex, sending him backing away until he was pressed against the stone wall.

“BEAR!” Kimberly screamed.

It was indeed a bear. Large, furred, clawed and apparently quite upset that a bunch of people had wandered into its lair. As Kimberly’s voice died down, the bear gave voice to its own, much more carrying roar.

It would be nice to say that the older students sprang into action like a well-oiled squad. Nice, but not accurate. To be fair, the only two of them with a squad in common were Jimmy and Suzy so it wasn’t as if they were used to working together.

Danielle flamed on and hopped into the air, only to be almost blown into the wall as her brother also took to the sky, surrounded by a whirlwind of air that hammered at the other students. Mei grabbed hold of Nina and Kimberly, pulling them away from the bear while Jimmy metalified himself and stepped forwards, inadvertently provoking the bear into lumbering towards him and blocking the kids from the castle gate.

Two conflicting voices snapped orders: “Back away -” “Fliers get clear.” “keep your voices -” “Alex get the –“ “down and don’t -” “girls clear.” “provoke it.” “Thomas, go.”

Alex wasn’t at all sure what he was being told to do but guessed he wasn’t going to contribute anything directly. He checked the door into the tower behind him was open and hissed. “Danny, Mei. This way.”

The first to reach him was Danny, half a step ahead of Mei and the two freshman girls. Alex grabbed Danny and stepped backwards onto the AVM quad. “Be right back,” he promised and stepped into the tower room again, almost knocking Nina over.

“Watch out!” she shrilled.

“Sorry!” He grabbed her, couldn’t keep her from falling and went with it.

The sound of the bear roaring again cut off abruptly as they hit the grass of the quad and rolled – in different directions, fortunately.

Nina glared at him. “What are you doing?”

Alex rolled to his feet. “Later.” He stepped back and was in the tower again. Mei and Kimberly were well away from the door, which now that he’d had a chance to actually think, was probably too small for the bear to get through… or… well, he wasn’t actually sure about that. He couldn’t really visualise how broad it was.

“Here.” Mei pushed Kimberly to him and Alex caught the girl by both arms and back-pedalled.

He lost his footing a second time as he backed out of the otherworld, tripping over his own feet, but let go of Kimberly rather than dragging her down with him.

“Are you okay?” asked Danny.

“Yeah, I think so.” This time he took a moment longer to get to his feet. Other students were looking at them, the arrival was pretty public and the quad wasn’t exactly the middle of nowhere.

“Are you going back?”

“Yeah.” He thought and then stepped back once more, aiming for the path leading down to the castle entrance rather than inside the tower where he’d have no idea what was going on.

There was no immediate sight of the bear, although he could certainly hear it. Danielle was in the air, her fiery form immediately visible. “Dani! Flashover!” he waved his hand and got her attention. “What’s going on?”

“I think it’s pretty settled!” she called back. “Did you get everyone out of the tower?”

“Everyone but Mei.”

“Okay, stay outside until it’s safe.”

A moment later Larry and Mary flew over the castle walls, carrying Thomas between them. The sight of blood on his roommate’s arm sent a shiver down Alex’s spine but the black boy was moving easily enough. “Alex!” Larry called as they dove down towards him. “Can you get Thomas to the hospice?”

“I’m fine, it’s just a scratch.”

“You want to argue with Mr. Ross.”

Alex didn’t, so he grabbed Thomas by his non-bloody arm. “What happened?” he asked as he pulled the other boy after him.

“Bear claws,” Thomas told him. “All things considered, I prefer the doughnuts.”

What did doughnuts have to do with bear claws? Alex wondered as they approached the reception. The woman behind the desk studied them and nodded sharply. “Lacerated arm,” she said to Thomas and then looked at Alex. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Good.” She didn’t seem to have done anything but a younger woman wearing a light green tunic with white piping and carrying a first-aid box emerged from a swing door. “One lacerated arm on the larger one,” the receptionist declared. “What’s his name?” she asked Alex.

“Thomas Russell,” he answered as his roommate was taken away through the swing doors.

“Is he a student?”

“Yes. Freshman… we’re in Ocampo dorm, room 233.”

The woman nodded. “Ah… yes, I have his records. Okay. How did it happen?”

“A bear clawed him. I didn’t see it.”

“How did you find a bear on campus?” She picked up a phone. “Do security know?”

“We were off campus, it was… a field trip. Mr. Ross said to bring him straight here.”

She stared at him. “There was nowhere closer?”

“…it’s complicated.”

“Your name?”

“Alex McKenzie.”

The woman typed on a keyboard and then her face relaxed. “Oh, you’re the teleporter. Sorry, I should have realised.”

“It’s fine. I didn’t really explain it well.” He glanced around. “Will he be okay? I have to get back to the others.”

“I’d be very surprised if there are any complications with just a few lacerations,” the receptionist told him. “Tell Mr. Ross we’ll want his report on this for the file.”

Alex nodded acquiescently and took one deliberate step back to where he’d been in the otherworld. The others were pretty much where they had been, except Suzy who had arrived in his absence, although she ran off the moment she saw him, disappearing from view.

“Was it something I did?”

“No.” Danielle shook her head. She was still in her fiery form and sparks seemed to fly off her hair. “Mr. Ross wanted her to tell him once you got back.”

“Is everyone okay?”

“Sure. Well, except Thomas, but I doubt the hospice will have much trouble with a few scratches.”

“What happened to him?”

The girl made a face. “He tried to wrestle with the bear. Bad move.”

“Evidently.”

“No, because Mr. Ross was telling us all to back away and not provoke it. The best fight is one that you never need to have,” she added with the air of one reciting a long-repeated lesson.

“Ah, is that what he was saying?”

A few moments later, the dorm parent himself emerged from the castle, looking annoyed. “McKenzie! Did you drop your roommate off at the hospice?”

“Yes sure. They think he’ll be fine.”

“Not when I get my hands on him,” the man muttered under his breath. “We’re going to have to call this off now,” he said in a louder voice. “Do you have a preference about the bear?”

“I…” Alex reached up and scratched his head. “I don’t know what the options are, sir.”

“Hurricane stunned it. You’re as near as we have to a local authority here. Do you want it dead? Taken off the island? Or leave it alone – you’re not so very far from it, you know.”

“Well it’s not bothered me until now, sir. And I imagine it could just come across the lake.”

“It might follow our scents back to the other castle. It may well have forced the door here, so the other castle’s door could be insufficient protection.”

Alex considered the options and then shrugged. “Unless I appear directly in front of it, I should be able to get away. And killing seems like a very permanent decision.”

“It clawed up Thomas!” Larry exclaimed.

“Yes.” Mr Ross drew the word out. “After he attacked it, not the other way around.” He looked at Danielle. “Get the other students together here. Mr. McKenzie, drop Mr. Meadows off at security – he has a detention.”

“What for!” the boy exclaimed loudly.

“For arguing with a teacher in a crisis. Would you like it extended to tomorrow as well?”

Larry lowered his head. “No… sir.”

Mr. Ross gave him a searching look and then nodded. “Carry on, Mr. McKenzie.”

“Come on, Larry.” Alex held out his hand. The other boy grudgingly took it and followed him in a step that took them to the security offices, appearing outside the counter.

“McKenzie!” the woman behind the counter exclaimed. He’d seen her around but didn’t know her name. “What are you here for?”

“Uh…” He looked at Larry, who said nothing and didn’t even look at him. “Dropping off. Mr. Ross will be here to explain soon.”

She looked at him and then shrugged. “Okay. I assume you’ll be making a similarly sudden appearance?”

“It depends what he wants.”

“Okay.” The security woman looked over at Larry. “Take a seat kid.”

Alex stepped back across. Suzy had returned and he could see Philip in the air above the castle. A moment later Jimmy and Mei emerged from the door, jogging towards them.

“Back?” Mr. Ross asked. “Okay, take us back one at a time.”

Alex looked at the keep. “I have to keep coming to the same spot I left from over here. Could we head back to the other castle first? I’d rather not be stuck with this as my arrival spot when the bear’s woken up.”

“Hmm. Good thinking. Alright, but take Ms. Yakumo back first.”

“I’m fine,” she said boldly. “A bear can’t hurt me!”

“You seem to have a rather relaxed attitude to instructions from a teacher,” the big man said flatly. “Not as bad as Mr. Russell and Mr. Meadows, but you’re going back now.”

“Aww, Alex…”

She stared at him and he avoided her eyes. “Sorry, teacher’s orders.” She reluctantly landed on the ground and he took her to the Quad. No use crowding security.

“What’s going on? Is everyone alright?” Nina exclaimed immediately as he appeared. “We saw you at the hospice.”

“Thomas needed some medical attention,” Alex told the gathered others. “I need to go back for the others, we’ll be coming back once we get further from the bear. Mary can fill you in.”

“Wa-”

He assumed that Nina was about to ask him to wait but that didn’t seem to be a very good idea so he stepped back across and walked right into Suzy. She blurred away to stand on Jimmy’s other side. “Can’t you tell where you are coming across?”

“It’s always pretty much where I left this side from,” he said defensively. “I didn’t know you’d be standing right there.”

Danielle raised one hand. “I volunteer to stand right where you leave from so that no one walks into that area.”

“Won’t that just mean I collide with you when I return?”

She smiled impishly and he felt his cheeks heat. “Uh, anyway, shall we go.”

Mr. Ross locked his phone, which he had out for some reason. “Probably for the best. There’s a rather sore-headed bear in there, after all.”

The mere existence of the bear encouraged Alex to set a faster pace as they jogged down the overgrown road through the town and towards ‘his’ castle. After the power testing months ago, he’d thought he was in pretty good shape but the older students were all at least as good. In this company, he realised, he was still a complete beginner.

Still, that leaves the opportunity to get better, he thought.

“Don’t worry about the bear,” Jimmy told him, jogging next to him. “We’re only hurrying so that Mr. Ross gets back with plenty of time to deal with the paperwork.”

“Your consideration,” the man said, voice still tight with anger, “Is appreciated, Mr. Corrigan.”

They crossed the improvised bridge and Danielle descended to hang in the air above it. “Alex, do you want me to take this out?”

He considered and then shook his head. “Either the bear doesn’t bother with the eastern end of the island, in which case it probably won’t come this way, or it has its own way of doing so. Either way, the bridge isn’t causing any harm.”

“Okay.” She hovered over and patted him on the shoulder. The flames around her felt a little warm but did no harm. “If it comes after us, Philip can knock it out again.”

“How did he do that?”

“It’s a trick I picked up from Lin,” the elder of the two Beaudoin siblings told him. “I pulled all the air away from its head, leaving it with nothing to breathe. Keep that up for more than a couple of minutes and most people lose consciousness. It’s the same with animals.”

“That poor teddy bear.”

Jimmy shook his head at Danielle’s comment. “I think they’re modelled off baby bears, not adults like that one. It was bigger and meaner than Tommy-boy.”

“And Theodore Roosevelt may not have been all that cuddly in person,” added Alex. That was one U.S. president he did know a little. “Sure, he spoke softly…”

“But he carried a big stick,” agreed the one American among the sophomores.

“A sage policy and most unlike his current successors,” Mei observed. “They all seem to bark very loudly.”  
“Yeah, but the U.S. has a lot of bite too,” Jimmy insisted patriotically.

“So I found out,” observed Suzy with a little smile, rubbing her neck.

The dorm parent cleared his throat warningly.

Jimmy changed the subject quickly. “Didn’t you manage to come back outside the castle earlier, rather than back into the tower, Alex?”

He paused. “Huh.” I did. “How did I do that?”

Mr Ross nodded. “It may be something you find feasible as you get more comfortable with your power. If you weren’t thinking you may have pushed your power harder than you usually would. One more reason to wrap things up now.”

Danielle patted Alex on the shoulder. “Well done! It’s is a shame that you didn’t find out more about the people who used to live here, Alex.”

“Well, it is. But maybe if I explore a bit further, they’ll come to light.” He was feeling hungry, suggesting that maybe he had pushed himself. But it was good to have that option.

“Do so cautiously.” Mr. Ross tapped his phone meaningfully. “I took some photos of the bear and it looks like some breed of brown bear, rather more dangerous than the black varieties. I’m not enough of an expert to guess the breed but we can find out.”

“That assumes it’s a breed that we’re familiar with.”

“If not then we may have naturalists wanting to take a look,” Mr. Ross said blandly. “And if it is a known breed then it may suggest where in the world the wildlife here comes from. There must have been some past contact before Alex or there likely wouldn’t be recognisable fauna and flora.”

He considered. “If someone does want a look, should I charge a fee?” Alex asked seriously.

“Yes,” Suzy said immediately.

“Suzy!” Danielle seemed shocked at the idea.

Philip chuckled from beside his sister. “It’s a unique service, sis. Although is that allowed?”

“Hmm. The school has oversight of any employment by its students, but there’s nothing actually illegal I can think of so our main concern would be that you weren’t being taken advantage of, Mr. McKenzie.”  
“What would you want the money for?” Mei asked. “General spending money or do you have something in mind?”

Alex pointed to the castle up ahead. “I suspect I’m going to have maintenance costs there sooner or later.”  
The corners of Mr. Ross’ mouth curved up a little. “Ah, the many burdens of being a homeowner. You’re young to be getting into those, good luck.”

“Thanks.” He looked down at the road and another thought struck him. “Actually, maybe I should look into getting a quad.”

“A… what?”

“A quad bike. Like a motorbike?”

“Oh… an ATV.” Mei nodded in understanding. “That would let you explore more.”

“Yes. I don’t know how to ride one, but it can’t be all that hard. If nothing else, four wheels should make it more stable.”

“How would you get fuel here though?”

“The same way I get everything across here, probably. Although they might be too large for me to bring across.”

Mei nodded. “What happens if you try to bring across more than you can manage?”

“The one time I didn’t bring someone with me, they were just left behind,” Alex told her. “Which is probably for the best. Leaving part of something behind would be annoying and possibly expensive. It’d have been really bad if I’d gone and left half a superhero behind.”

“Uh yeah!” Danielle exclaimed.

“Depending on the superhero,” her brother qualified.

Everyone looked at him with varying degrees of surprise or annoyance. “I hope that that was a joke.”

Philip shrugged. “In poor taste. I apologise,” he said, shooting a look at Danielle.

“I agree that not all superheroes are very heroic,” she replied. “But they are the exceptions and Alex accidentally cutting someone in two isn’t funny.”

“I am very very sorry,” he assured her.

“And on that sour note,” Mr. Ross pointed out. “Here we are.”  
They had reached the door of the castle, distracted by the conversation.

“Yeah.” Alex looked around. “Not quite how I wanted this expedition to go, but it could have been worse.”

“Is this close enough?” asked Danielle.

He nodded, and on an impulse gave her a sweeping bow before offering her his hand. “Ladies first.”

“Such a gentleman,” the Canadian girl replied and accepted his hand.

They took a step, hand in hand and they were on the edge of the Quad, looking at the others that Alex had brought back earlier. “And here I was thinking you’d take me to Kingsley.” She sounded a little disappointed. “Don’t you walk girls home after dates in England?”

“I can’t claim any great experience in that field.”

“Maybe next time then.” She let go of his hand and winked. “You don’t get a kiss since we’re not on my doorstep. Perhaps next time.”

“Uh…”

“Perhaps.”

“That’s fair.” One advantage of his new skin over his previous pale colour. Although Alex suspected Danielle knew perfectly well how hot his cheeks were.


End file.
